Searchlight Pictures’ EVP of Marketing Michelle Hooper is departing the specialty studio after a 20-year run, during which she oversaw the awards and marketing campaigns of 21 Best Picture Oscar-nominated films, five of which won the Academy’s top prize.
The first of those five wins for Hooper came in 2008 with Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire” and were followed with Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave,” Alejandro Inarritu’s “Birdman,” Guillermo Del Toro’s “The Shape of Water” and Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland.”
Other Oscar-nominated and winning films Hooper worked on include “Little Miss Sunshine,” “127 Hours,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” “The Favourite,” “Poor Things,” and “A Complete Unknown.”
Within Searchlight, Hooper was known as “The Closer” for her ability to make a major impact on Academy voters in the final weeks of an awards campaign.
Prior to her two decades in the specialty film world at Searchlight, Hooper worked in television with four years as VP of Entertainment Publicity at Fox, where she worked on some of the network’s biggest hit shows like “The Simpsons,” “American Idol,” “24,” “Family Guy” and “Arrested Development.” Prior to that, she was Director of Entertainment Communications at CBS, where she worked on the publicity campaign for the inaugural season of “Survivor” in 2000, helping to launch one of the most successful reality shows of all time.
Her final films at Searchlight include the upcoming Martin McDonagh dark comedy “Wild Horse Nine” and the Tony Gilroy music drama “Behemoth!”
“She’s a stellar leader for her creative insights and keen ability to read a film for where it fits in the zeitgeist, in turn setting her team up for wide-reaching success,” one longtime colleague told TheWrap. “But she’s also an equally formidable collaborator, one who can close a campaign with all the insights gained from keeping her ear to the ground and hearing feedback in real time. It’s a loss for the studio, but I guarantee you it will be another’s gain.” Hooper’s departure was first reported by Deadline.
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