Samuel Hadida

Born in a city that, on the basis of its name, Casablanca, will forevermore be intertwined with the history of movies, Samuel Hadida later moved to France, the place from which he bases his operations. In 1978, after he graduated from the University of Paris, Hadida and his brothers David and Victor launched Metropolitan Filmexport, which has become one of the biggest distributors of English-language cinema in the French-speaking world. Metropolitan is responsible for importing Quentin Tarantino's blood-soaked "Reservoir Dogs" and David Fincher's creepy-crawly thriller "Seven," which became the hottest film at the French box office the year it was released there. Starting with the martial-arts movie "Only the Strong," starring Mark Dacascos, Hadida branched off from film distribution and took on the more hands-on task of producing. In his second production, Tony Scott's surreal action comedy "True Romance," Hadida worked with Tarantino again, who had written the script with Roger Avary. Hadida's third production was Avary's feature-film directorial debut, "Killing Zoe." The producer proved to be one of Avary's big backers; they worked together again on "The Rules of Attraction" as well as the video-game-based "Silent Hill." That latter mode became a goldmine for the producer, who put his name on the "Resident Evil" series; but he has also produced for a number of respected industry names, like Terry Gilliam ("The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus"), Brian De Palma ("Black Dahlia"), and George Clooney ("Good Night and Good Luck").