Doug Liman

Liman’s first major success was Swingers, released in 1996. The film, written by Jon Favreau, is a comedy about struggling actors amid the L.A. club milieu, based on Favreau’s life. Liman raised the funding and it was made on the cheap, starring Favreau and his friends (Vince Vaughn, Ron Livingston, and Patrick Van Horn), ultimately costing $250,000. The film was a critical success, and jump-started the careers of Liman and the featured actors. Liman sold the film to Miramax for $5.5 million.

In August 2016, Liman signed on to direct Dark Universe, a film set within the DC Extended Universe and based on superhero team Justice League Dark after leaving the adaptation of Gambit.

In 2011, Liman directed and produced I Just Want My Pants Back, a television series that aired on MTV. He produces Covert Affairs and Suits, two original series on the USA Network. He directed the film adaptation of the Hiroshi Sakurazaka novel, All You Need is Kill, released as Edge of Tomorrow (2014), starring Tom Cruise. In 2017, he directed Aaron Taylor-Johnson and John Cena in the military thriller The Wall, and directed Cruise again, in the crime-action film American Made, a biopic of pilot Barry Seal.

He directed 2010's Fair Game, about the Plame affair, which competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.

In 2009, he co-founded the website 30ninjas.com which is geared towards fans of action movies and television, gaming, extreme sports and viral videos. He also maintains a blog on the site.

His film adaptation of Steven Gould's science fiction novel Jumper was released in 2008.

Liman also directed Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), a comedic thriller about an increasingly distant married couple, both secretly assassins, who are hired to kill each other. The film, his most commercially successful to date, is also well known for the off-screen romance that developed between stars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie after making the film. In 2005, Liman signed on to direct the pilot episode of NBC's television series Heist, which is about a season-long attempt to rob three jewelry stores on Beverly Hills' swanky Rodeo Drive.

Liman executive produced and directed the first two episodes ("Premiere" and "The Model Home") of the successful Fox prime time drama The O.C. (2003–2007). Liman produced and directed a series of comedy shorts for the Chrysler Film Project and Cannes Film Festival entitled Indie Is Great.

Liman next directed the 2002 action thriller The Bourne Identity starring Matt Damon, an adaptation of the 1980 Robert Ludlum novel The Bourne Identity was a box office success, earning over $200 million, and began a Bourne film franchise that has since included four additional films. Liman did not direct any Bourne films after the first one, but served as an executive producer for three of the four subsequent films (2004's The Bourne Supremacy, 2007's The Bourne Ultimatum and 2016's Jason Bourne).

Liman next directed Go (1999), which tracks the events of a drug deal gone wrong through three different points of view as plot lines diverged and reconverged; Liman was also the film's cinematographer. The film was an indie hit and made a profit at the box office grossing $28.4 million worldwide against a $6.5 million budget.

In 1999, Liman shot a commercial for Nike in which Tiger Woods, without letting the ball touch the ground, repeatedly bounced a ball on his club and then drove it into the distance.

Liman attended the graduate program at University of Southern California, where he was tapped to helm his first project in 1993, the comedy film Getting In.

Liman began making short films while still in junior high school and studied at International Center of Photography in New York City. While attending Brown University, he helped to co-found the student-run cable television station BTV and served as its first station manager. He also co-founded the National Association of College Broadcasters (NACB), the first trade association geared to student-staffed radio and television stations, in 1988.

Douglas Eric Liman (/ˈ l aɪ m ə n / ; born July 24, 1965) is an American film director and producer. He is known for directing the films Swingers (1996), Go (1999), The Bourne Identity (2002), Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Jumper (2008), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), and American Made (2017).