Allison Shearmur
January 19, 2018 (aged 54)
Alli Shearmur
Film executive, producer
1994–2018
2
Formative years and family life[edit]
Allison Ivy Brecker was one of the quadruplets born to Martin and Rhoda Brecker on October 23, 1963. She grew up in a traditional Jewish household,[3] and attended the University of Pennsylvania Law School. After completing her Juris Doctor at the USC Gould School of Law, she became a member of the State Bar of California. While at university, she entered a campus contest and won first prize, lunch with Stanley Jaffe, an executive at Columbia Pictures. Jaffe became a lifelong mentor and role model for Shearmur.[3]
She married film composer Edward Shearmur, with whom she had two children. In 2014, the Shearmurs had a house featured in House Beautiful.[4]
Career[edit]
After graduation, Allison Shearmur was participated in a young executive management initiative, and was subsequently selected to become a manager in the comedy development department at Columbia TriStar. She worked at Disney as a vice-president between 1994 and 1997, where she worked on movies including George of the Jungle.[2] She then joined Universal as an executive vice-president of production, and worked on Along Came Polly, Erin Brockovich and the American Pie and Bourne series.[2]
Shearmur also worked for two years at Paramount as co-president of production, where she was responsible for the studio's literary productions such as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Stop-Loss, Zodiac, Dreamgirls, Charlotte's Web, Nacho Libre, and Failure to Launch.[5] In 2008, she moved to Lionsgate as president of motion picture production. While at Lionsgate she produced the first two Hunger Games movies, then executive produced the final two.[2]
Shearmur formed her own production company, Allison Shearmur Productions.[1][2] In 2017, her company executive produced the television movie Dirty Dancing.[2]
Illness and death[edit]
Allison Shearmur developed lung cancer and died from the disease at the age of fifty-four on January 19, 2018, at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles.[1][2] The films Solo: A Star Wars Story, The One and Only Ivan and Chaos Walking were dedicated to her memory.