Timur Nuruakhitovich Bekmambetov is a Russian-Kazakh film director, producer, screenwriter, and tech entrepreneur.
21 Facts About Timur Bekmambetov
2.
Timur Bekmambetov is best known for the fantasy epic Night Watch and action thriller Wanted, as well as for pioneering screenlife films: Unfriended, Searching and Profile.
3.
Timur Bekmambetov founded Baselevs, a production company that earned a spot among the 2021 World's 10 Most Innovative Companies in Video, according to Fast Company.
4.
Timur Bekmambetov has Kazakh ancestry on his father's side, and Jewish ancestry on his mother's side.
5.
Timur Bekmambetov was deported from Moscow on the grounds of being "unreliable" and moved to Tashkent, Uzbek SSR, to study at the Alexander Ostrovsky Theatrical and Artistic Institute, from which he graduated in 1987 with a degree in theater and cinema set design.
6.
Timur Bekmambetov started his career in the late 1980s as a production designer at the Ilkhom Theatre in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and at Uzbek national film studio Uzbekfilm.
7.
In 2004, Timur Bekmambetov wrote and directed Night Watch, a Russian fantasy film based on the book by Sergey Lukyanenko.
8.
The sequel to Night Watch, Day Watch, was likewise written and directed by Timur Bekmambetov and set a new record for the Russian domestic box office, having grossed more than US$26 million in the first two weeks.
9.
In 2009, alongside Tim Burton and Jim Lemley, Timur Bekmambetov produced an animation film titled 9, the story of a rag doll in a post-apocalyptic world, directed by Shane Acker.
10.
In 2011, Timur Bekmambetov produced the science fiction thriller Apollo 18, together with The Weinstein Company, and the science fiction film The Darkest Hour set in Moscow and produced by New Regency.
11.
Timur Bekmambetov was awarded the 2012 International Filmmaker of the Year award by the National Association of Theatre Owners.
12.
In 2016, Timur Bekmambetov directed Ben-Hur, the fifth film adaptation of the novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace.
13.
In 2017, Timur Bekmambetov produced the historical drama The Current War starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Holland and Nicholas Hoult.
14.
In December 2022, Timur Bekmambetov sold the Bazelevs film studio in Russia to its general producer, Lala Rustamova, and commercial director, Timur Asadov.
15.
Timur Bekmambetov has completely retired from the Russian business, but the studio will continue to cooperate with him as a filmmaker and screenwriter.
16.
Timur Bekmambetov is the pioneer of the Screenlife filmmaking, thus responding to people's life migrating to the digital world of mobile gadgets.
17.
Timur Bekmambetov followed that up with the 2018 thriller led by John Cho, Searching, grossing more than $75 million worldwide.
18.
In 2020, Universal and Timur Bekmambetov inked a deal to partner on five Hollywood features to be made in the screenlife format in various genres.
19.
Timur Bekmambetov is the current owner of the former Walt Disney mansion in Los Angeles.
20.
Timur Bekmambetov is trying to fix everything, make everything organised somehow.
21.
In 2022 Timur Bekmambetov condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine and called the boycott of Russian films in the West "emotional, sincere and reasonable".