Simon Kinberg

• 1. Introduction

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  Simon Kinberg has a small cameo in one of his own scripts. In Mr. & Mrs. Smith, he plays the banker who chats with John Smith at a dinner party. He had started the screenplay years earlier, as his thesis project in film school. That scene sits at the center of a much bigger career built behind the camera. Kinberg spent years writing, producing, and eventually directing franchise films for 20th Century Fox. How did a screenwriter with almost no on-screen presence end up shaping the X-Men film series, an Oscar-nominated survival story, and eventually a new Star Wars trilogy? And what happens in the decades between a film school thesis and a deal with Lucasfilm?

• 2. Origins

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  Kinberg was born on the 2nd of August 1973, in Hammersmith, London; his parents, Monica Menell-Kinberg and Jud Kinberg, were American, and Jud was a New York City-born writer and producer. From age six, he was raised in Los Angeles, California, and he is Jewish.

  At Brentwood School, Kinberg built the academic record that carried him to Brown University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude. In 2003, he went on to earn an MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts.

  At Columbia, Kinberg won the Zaki Gordon Fellowship for Screenwriting. That fellowship year put him on a path that led, while he was still a student, toward his first Hollywood sale.

• 3. Breaking Into Hollywood

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  While still enrolled in film school, Kinberg sold a pitch to Warner Bros., launching a run of writing assignments for Disney, Sony, and DreamWorks. On those jobs, he worked alongside Steven Spielberg and Jerry Bruckheimer, among others.

  After finishing school, Kinberg moved to Hollywood. His first screenwriting credit was XXX: State of the Union, a 2005 sequel to the 2002 action hit XXX.

  Doug Liman directed Kinberg's next script, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Kinberg later adapted the story again, writing the pilot episode for an ABC television version of Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

  That television pilot work overlapped with a new job: joining the writing team behind Fox's X-Men franchise.

• 4. The X-Men Machine

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  Kinberg co-wrote X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006 alongside Zak Penn, adapting the Dark Phoenix storyline originally created by comic-book writer Chris Claremont. Claremont also wrote the film's novelization, and in it, he wrote Kinberg into the story as a character.

  Kinberg returned to the franchise in 2011 as producer of X-Men: First Class. He then wrote and produced X-Men: Days of Future Past in 2014, followed by X-Men: Apocalypse as its direct successor.

  Kinberg produced a run of spinoffs across the back half of the decade: 2016's Deadpool, 2017's Logan, and 2018's Deadpool 2. He wrote and directed 2019's Dark Phoenix, his first time behind the camera, and also produced The New Mutants. In 2024, he served as executive producer on Deadpool & Wolverine, extending his run with the character even further.

  In 2016, The Hollywood Reporter named Kinberg the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood, crediting a record two X-Men script deals in its annual Hollywood Salaries issue. The same issue named him one of the highest-paid producers in Hollywood, on the strength of Deadpool. That year, the Saturn Awards also gave Kinberg a lifetime achievement award. The Hollywood Reporter also ranked him 61st on its list of the 100 most powerful people in Hollywood.

  Those same years, Kinberg was already producing well beyond mutants, including an adaptation of an Agatha Christie novel.

• 5. A Widening Slate

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  Kinberg reunited with director Doug Liman on Jumper in 2008, writing and producing a film that starred Samuel L. Jackson, Hayden Christensen, and Diane Lane. A year later, Kinberg wrote Sherlock Holmes for director Guy Ritchie, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law.

  Kinberg's production company, Genre Films, struck a first-look agreement with 20th Century Fox in April 2010.

  In 2012, Kinberg wrote and produced This Means War, and also served as co-screenwriter and executive producer on Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. The next year, Kinberg produced Elysium, and by 2014 he had also produced the comedy Let's Be Cops.

  In 2015 alone, Kinberg produced Neill Blomkamp's Chappie, Disney's live-action Cinderella, and took on Fantastic Four as both writer and producer. The Martian, directed by Ridley Scott, was the last film Kinberg worked on that year.

  Kinberg also produced a film version of Agatha Christie's novel Murder on the Orient Express, directed by Kenneth Branagh. His collaboration with Branagh continued in 2022, when Kinberg served as executive producer on Death on the Nile, another Christie adaptation.

  Kinberg's producing credits by then also spanned network television, on shows airing across ABC, FX, and Fox.

• 6. Screens Big and Small

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  On ABC, Kinberg served as executive producer of Designated Survivor, starring Kiefer Sutherland. On FX, Kinberg executive produced Legion, a series created by Noah Hawley, and on Fox, The Gifted extended the X-Men film franchise to television.

  In 2019, Kinberg executive produced the third revival of the science-fiction anthology series The Twilight Zone. It premiered that year on CBS All Access, now known as Paramount+.

  That year, in July, Kinberg and his production company, Genre Films, left 20th Century Fox after 20 years there.

  Leaving Fox also freed Kinberg to look toward a franchise he had been linked to years earlier: Star Wars.

• 7. A Star Wars Detour

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  In 2015, Kinberg served as a creative consultant on Star Wars: The Force Awakens. He also received a thanks credit on that same film and, the following year, on Rogue One.

  The Hollywood Reporter first reported that Lawrence Kasdan would team with Kinberg on Star Wars Episodes VIII and IX. Kasdan had written The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

  A week later, the same publication walked the claim back. It said Kasdan and Kinberg would work on future Star Wars projects, but not necessarily on Episodes VIII and IX.

  On the 7th of November 2024, Lucasfilm announced that Kinberg would write and co-produce a new trilogy of Star Wars films alongside Kathleen Kennedy.

  That announcement came decades into a career that, off the page, had also included a marriage, a divorce, and a new engagement.

• 8. Marriages and Family

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  On the 26th of July 2001, Kinberg and Mali Heled were married in a Jewish ceremony, and they went on to have two sons.

  They separated in 2014 and finalized a divorce in 2017.

  Kinberg's engagement to writer Cleo Wade was in place by the 4th of November 2019. Their two daughters were born in 2020 and 2021.

  Kinberg's filmography already stretches past the present. The Running Man and Here Comes the Flood are both listed for 2025 and 2026. A television project called Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is marked simply as upcoming.