Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein, the filmmaking duo behind last year’s horror hit “Final Destination Bloodlines,” have appointed veteran producer and executive Jon Cohen as president of Wonderlab, their newly launched production company, the company announced Monday. The hiring comes after Wonderlab recently entered a first-look deal with Sony Pictures.
Cohen joins Wonderlab from J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, where he most recently served as head of film.
“We are so incredibly excited to launch Wonderlab with Jon,” Lipovsky and Stein said in a statement to TheWrap. “During his time at Bad Robot, Jon had a discerning eye for discovering some of the brightest genre filmmakers and writers and empowering them to make smart, original movies that connect with audiences. From our first conversations, Jon blew us away with his intelligence and deep creative insights about how to craft great stories. He shares our love of making unique and elevated films that are also incredibly fun and entertaining, and his collaborative nature is a perfect fit for the iterative way we plan to develop new movies at Wonderlab.”
During his tenure at Bad Robot, Cohen produced a wide-ranging slate of feature films, including “10 Cloverfield Lane” as co-producer and “The Cloverfield Paradox” and “Overlord” as executive producer. He was also a producer on “Lou” for Netflix, “The End of Oak Street” for Warner Bros. and the upcoming JT Mollner/Brie Larson film “Skeletons,” which Sony is set to release in 2027.
Cohen previously held executive positions at The Donners Company and Davis Entertainment before joining Bad Robot.
“I couldn’t be more thrilled to be joining forces with Zach and Adam, and to be on the ground floor of what they’re creating with Wonderlab,” Cohen said. “I’ve admired the guys’ filmmaking for a while, and their ‘Final Destination: Bloodlines’ was the sort of clever, impeccably made and wildly entertaining genre movie that so many aspire to create but very few can. As I’ve gotten to know them better, I’ve only grown more impressed with their ambition, work ethic, taste, story sense and talent, and how it’s all fused to an incredibly collaborative process and mindset that makes everyone who works with them long to work with them again.”
Cohen added: “I’m very grateful to them for this opportunity, and to Sony Pictures for the faith they’ve placed in Wonderlab, and I look forward to making thrilling, surprising and emotionally resonant genre movies with this group for years to come.”
“Wonderlab’s mission is to make movies using an iterative process that surrounds our creators with candid feedback from test audiences and other filmmakers,” Stein and Lipovsky added. “It’s a process we’ve built over many years to make sure a film is the best it can be. We’re grateful to Tom, Sanford and Peter at Sony for helping us scale this process across a slate of awesome films in the pipeline.”
Wonderlab’s first-look deal with Sony Pictures has the company developing projects across all of Sony’s film labels. Projects already announced include an animated “Venom” movie for Sony Pictures Animation; “Metal Gear Solid,” based on the acclaimed video game; and “The Earthling,” based on the Jonathan Marty short story, with the latter two projects being developed for Columbia Pictures.
The post Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein’s Wonderlab Banner Taps Jon Cohen as President appeared first on TheWrap.
