Steven Spielberg spotted the USC Thesis Film "Headless!" by a young director, which had won the Grand Jury Prize for best short at the Houston International Film Festival, and subsequently hired him to direct Dreamworks Interactive's "Goosebumps: Escape from Horrorland".
The director's next assignment was to direct sequences on "Antz", the company's first computer-generated imagery (CGI) feature, which boasted an impressive voice cast including Woody Allen, Sharon Stone, and Christopher Walken.
Following this, he developed and prepared a live-action/CGI version of "Curious George" for producer Ron Howard, Imagine Entertainment, and Universal Studios. Although the project was put on hold by the studio, the director didn't waste any time and went on to direct "Cats and Dogs" for Warner Bros., which garnered over $200 million in worldwide box office revenue.
The BBC praised the film, stating that it "succeeds both as a parody of the spy genre, and in stretching the boundaries of what you believe is possible", while A.O. Scott of the New York Times described it as "exuberant fun".
Before embarking on his directing career, the filmmaker received an undergraduate degree in physics from Harvard University after attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) for his freshman year.
