Jonathan Liebesman was born on September 15, 1976, in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he would spend his early years studying filmmaking at the South African School of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance until 1996.
That year, he traveled to New York City to visit his cousin, who was attending New York University, and soon after, Jonathan enrolled at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.
For his student film, Jonathan adapted Roald Dahl's short story "Genesis and Catastrophe" into an 8-minute, award-winning short film that helped him land Hollywood representation, earning accolades such as the 2000 Hollywood Film Festival's Young Filmmaker Award and the Austin Film Festival's Student Short Film Award.
Jonathan made his feature-film debut in 2002 with "Darkness Falls," a dark twist on the Tooth Fairy tale that opened at number one at the box office despite being critically panned. It also served as the big-screen debut for Emma Caulfield Ford, long a fan-favorite as Anya Jenkins on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
In 2005, his short film "Rings" connected The Ring (2002) and its sequel, first released as a bonus disc with the re-release of The Ring on DVD. The short caught the attention of Michael Bay and his production company, Platinum Dunes, and soon Jonathan was installed as the director of the company's project "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning," a prequel to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003),the widely successful remake of the original.
Initially announced as the director of the Friday the 13th reboot, Jonathan's next feature would instead be "The Killing Room" (2009) with Peter Stormare, Chloë Sevigny, Clea DuVall, Timothy Hutton, Nick Cannon, and Shea Whigham. The psychological thriller played the festival circuit before being released on DVD in the United States.
A few months before "The Killing Room's" Sundance world premiere in January 2009, Jonathan was announced as the director of "Battle Los Angeles" (2011),an alien-invasion film starring Aaron Eckhart and released by Columbia Pictures. The sci-fi/action film was a worldwide hit and put Jonathan in the running for a handful of big-studio pictures.
Before "Battle LA's" release, he had handed the job of directing [error] as Warner Bros., though that project remains in development at this time. Instead, Jonathan took the reins for "Wrath of the Titans" (2012),the sequel to the successful but maligned "Clash of the Titans" (2010).
Currently, Jonathan is in development on "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" (2014) at Paramount and an Untitled Julius Caesar Project with Warner Bros.
