Cale Boyter, Ali Mendes Rejoin Mary Parent At Legendary
Cale Boyter and Ali Mendes have joined Legendary from Disruption Entertainment. They follow Mary Parent, who became Vice Chairman of Worldwide Production for Thomas Tull’s global production/financing company. Boyter and Mendes will serve as EVP Production and VP Development, respectively. They join a Legendary executive roster that includes exec veep of production Alex Garcia, production veep Alex Hedlund, and creative executive Brady Fujikawa.
Parent took the post March 3 and replaced Jon Jashni, who ran Tull’s company but exited to start Raintree Ventures. All this followed Legendary being acquired for $3.5B by Wanda. Not surprisingly, a priority of Boyter and Mendes and the rest of the Legendary exec team will be to develop and oversee feature film productions that will play globally, including China. When she exited, Parent left behind at Paramount the projects she developed at Disruption, and Boyter and Mendes were expected to join her over time. Now, they have. Legendary releases Warcraft on June 10, The Great Wall follows on February 17, and then Kong: Skull Island arrives March 10.
“I have had the good fortune to work with Cale for many years, and he is as smart, passionate and hardworking they come,” Parent said. “Ali joined us at Disruption and made an immediate impact on the company’s slate and production activities. These two executives create part of the bedrock for Legendary’s slate going forward, and we plan to bring to audiences around the globe films that entertain and inspire.”
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Boyter began his career as an assistant at Paradigm, and then worked up from the ground floor at New Line, starting as a reader and rising to executive veep of production who oversaw such films as Elf, Wedding Crashers, A History of Violence, The Butterfly Effect and Journey to the Center of the Earth. He moved to MGM as exec veep and supervised Hot Tub Time Machine and The Cabin in the Woods. His Disruption projects included the Guillermo del Toro-directed Pacific Rim.
Mendes graduated NYU and started at Darren Aronofsky’s NY-based Protozoa Pictures, where she was director of development and worked on Black Swan and Noah. She moved to LA in 2013 to become Disuption’s development director and rose to veep. Among other projects, she worked on Nicktoons, the combination live-action/animated film that will be directed by Jared Hess. The film was based on her idea to bring back the classic Nickelodeon television characters for one film.
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