Marc Abraham

In the early 2000s, the wave of re-makes of recent classic films was partially due to the work of Marc Abraham, a veteran producer of a long series of movies stretching back to the early '90s. He produced several of the era's big remakes, including the '02 version of the young-romance fantasy "Tuck Everlasting" and the second take of "Dawn of the Dead" ('04), originally a George Romero zombie gore-fest. Abraham started in the lower ranks on the business end of the film industry. In '90, he helped found Beacon Communications, a successful production and financing firm. Not content with only establishing and guiding a company, he dug into production chores as well. Throughout that decade, he had production credits on such big-name offerings as '91's "The Commitments," an underdog rock-and-roll story set in Ireland, and "Air Force One" ('97), featuring Harrison Ford as a macho United States president battling terrorists in the executive airplane of the title. Abraham took a break from producing to occupy the director's chair for another underdog tale, '08's "Flash of Genius," about the inventor of intermittent windshield wipers (Greg Kinnear) taking on Detroit's big car companies in the '60s.