Matt Shakman

Matt Shakman is an American film television and theatre director and former child actor He produced and directed WandaVision and has directed episodes of The Great Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia Fargo and Game of Thrones He is the artistic director of the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles California Shakman was born and raised in Ventura California His Jewish father and Catholic mother maintained a relatively secular household their interfaith marriage being a source of conflict with Shakmans Jewish paternal grandmother After acting as a child starting with commercials and landing a series regular role on Just the Ten of Us he stepped away to attend The Thacher School in Ojai Shakman went on to attend Yale University where he graduated with an art history and theatre double major It was at Yale that Shakman became interested in theatre going on to direct a number of stage productions After university Shakman lived in New York City for several years before permanently moving to Los Angeles As a child actor Shakman played Graham JR Lubbock Jr in the Growing Pains spinoff series Just the Ten of Us 19881990 His other television acting credits include The Facts of Life Highway to Heaven Diffrent Strokes Night Court Good Morning Miss Bliss and Webster He also appeared in the films A Night at the Magic Castle 1988 and Meet the Hollowheads 1989 Shakman is the founder and artistic director of the Black Dahlia Theatre BDT in Los Angeles which was named one of a dozen young American companies you need to know by American Theatre Magazine Since 2002 Shakman has mostly been directing for television Among his credits are Succession Mad Men Six Feet Under The Boys The Great House MD Fargo and Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia also executive producer Shakman directed the episodes The Spoils of War and Eastwatch for the seventh season of the HBO series Game of Thrones in 2017 In August of the same year Shakman was appointed as the new artistic director of the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles In 2017 TriStar Pictures announced that Shakman would direct its upcoming liveactionhybrid film adaptation of The Phantom Tollbooth until in 2018 Carlos Saldanha replaced Shakman due to scheduling conflicts In 2021 Shakman directed and executive produced the Marvel Studios miniseries WandaVision for Disney Later that year it was revealed that Shakman would direct a film in the Star Trek franchise In late August 2022 Shakman was in early talks to direct the Marvel Studios film The Fantastic Four set to release in 2025 replacing Jon Watts who exited the project to take a break from superhero films On August 26 2022 Shakman exited the Star Trek film citing scheduling issues before being confirmed as the Fantastic Four director just weeks later When asked why he chose to do Fantastic Four over Star Trek Shakman said Movies have different journeys and momentums and schedules are a little bit mercurial and so when the Fantastic Four opportunity came up it was just too hard to pass up and to go back home to Marvel a place that I worked on WandaVision at with those people who are wonderful collaborators Description above from the Wikipedia article Matt Shakman licenced under CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia