Barry Spikings
Barry Spikings ( born November 23, 1939 in Boston, Lincolnshire ) is a British film producer.
Life and work
Barry Spikings was born in 1939 in the English city of Boston. His father Maurice worked as a farm manager in Fishtoft in Boston. He took his son as early as the toddler years several times a week with in a Boston cinema, which aroused his interest in films early. Barry Spikings first attended the Boston Grammar School. He then began a journalism training at the Boston Standard. Later he worked for the magazine Farmers' Weekly. During this time he produced his first short film, which he also directed. In London, he then worked for the International Publishing Corporation (now IPC Media ), where he made contact with some Hollywood producers. With Michael Deeley ( born 1932 ) and Stanley Baker founded Barry Spikings the company Great Western Enterprises, which were active in the entertainment sector and among other things was promoting concerts.
1972 bought Spikings and Deeley an independent production companies in the British Lion Films. Spikings produced at British Lion his first two full-length feature films, the drama The shame of the regiment and the successful science fiction film The Man Who Fell from the sky. As chairman of the Shepperton Studios he rose through various measures such as staff reductions and cooperation with other companies, the profitability of the studios. This attracted the attention of Bernard Delfont, Chief Executive Officer ( CEO) of EMI Films and Theatre Corporation, up. Delfon wanted to buy up British Lion Films and 1975 it finally came to the merger of the two companies. Spikings got into the management of EMI film and was even five years later its CEO. At the same time he was chairman of the British film production company Elstree.
When EMI Films Spikings reached a high point of his career as a producer. In 1978 he produced the epic anti-war film The Deer Hunter, for which he won jointly with co - producer Michael Deeley, Michael Cimino and John Peverall an Oscar. He was also Executive Producer of the road movie Convoy, which was released in the same year.
After the merger between EMI and Thorn Electrical Industries 1979 Spikings left England and moved with his wife Dorothy to Malibu Colony, a suburb of Malibu, California. In 1986 he was co-founder and president of Nelson Holdings. The subsidiary Nelson Entertainment, he secured the video rights of extinct company in 1986 Embassy Pictures, the newly formed film company Castle Rock Entertainment. He produced several other movies like Bill & Ted 's Bogus Journey into the future in the early 1990s.
In 2006 he received from the University of Lincoln Honorary Doctorate ( Honorary Doctorate of Arts) was awarded.
Currently, Spin Kings partner in California's film production company Spikings Entertainment, with whom he 2013 war film produced Lone Survivor.