Tim League is an American entrepreneur and film producer based in Austin,

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

. He is the founder of the

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is an American cinema chain founded in 1997 in Austin, Texas, which is famous for serving dinner and drinks during the movie, as well as its strict policy of requiring its audiences to maintain proper cinema-going etiq ...

chain and the founder of the film distribution company Drafthouse Films, where League has produced films including ''

The ABCs of Death ''The ABCs of Death'' is a 2012 American comedy horror anthology film produced by international producers and directed by filmmakers from around the world. The film contains 26 shorts, each by different directors spanning fifteen countries, inc ...

.'' He is also the co-founder of genre film festival

Fantastic Fest Fantastic Fest is an annual film festival in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 2005 by Tim League of Alamo Drafthouse, Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News, Paul Alvarado-Dykstra, and Tim McCanlies, writer of ''The Iron Giant'' and ''Secondhand ...

, the entertainment merchandise entity Mondo, and the film distribution and production company Neon.

Alamo Drafthouse

League graduated from

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a private research university in Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranked among the top universities ...

in 1992 with degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Art/Art History. While at Rice, Tim was once detained by the campus police for interrupting a campus event while dressed as a banana. After a two-year stint at

Shell Oil Company Shell USA, Inc. (formerly Shell Oil Company, Inc.) is the United States-based wholly owned subsidiary of Shell plc, a UK-based transnational corporation " oil major" which is amongst the largest oil companies in the world. Approximately 18,0 ...

in Bakersfield, California, he left the engineering profession and opened up his first movie theater. An unmitigated financial disaster, the Tejon theater closed in 1995, and he loaded a truck with 200 seats, a projector, screen and speakers and headed to

Austin, Texas Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...

to start the

, where he remained as CEO until 2020 when he was replaced by Shelli Taylor. He then took up a new position as chairman of the board. When asked about his motivation in opening a movie theater in the first place, "What we set out to do in the very beginning was to make a movie theater by fans for fans. And we got into the business because we love movies and we got a little frustrated with our options as to what the movie theater experience was all about".

Rolling Roadshow

League also founded the Rolling Roadshow, which takes classic films around the country to project them at the site they were set in.

Mondo

In 2004, League co-founded the entertainment merchandise entity known as Mondo to produce and distribute limited edition poster art, t-shirts, toys and vinyl record soundtracks.

Fantastic Fest

League co-founded

, the largest genre film festival in the United States. Fantastic Fest is an annual

film festival A film festival is an organized, extended presentation of films in one or more cinemas or screening venues, usually in a single city or region. Increasingly, film festivals show some films outdoors. Films may be of recent date and, depending upo ...

. It was founded in 2005 by Tim League of

Alamo Drafthouse The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is an American cinema chain founded in 1997 in Austin, Texas, which is famous for serving dinner and drinks during the movie, as well as its strict policy of requiring its audiences to maintain proper cinema-going etiq ...

Harry Knowles Harry Jay Knowles (born December 11, 1971) is an American film critic and writer known for his website called Ain't It Cool News. Knowles was a member of the Austin Film Critics Association until he was removed in September 2017 "by a substanti ...

Ain't It Cool News Ain't It Cool News (AICN) is an entertainment news website founded by Harry Knowles and run by his sister Dannie Knowles since September 2017, dedicated to news, rumors, and reviews of upcoming and current films, television, and comic book pro ...

, Paul Alvarado-Dykstra, and

Tim McCanlies Tim McCanlies (born 1953) is a film director and screenwriter. He is best known for writing and directing ''Secondhand Lions'', and for writing the screenplay for ''The Iron Giant''. Biography Tim McCanlies is a fifth-generation Texan, but rar ...

, writer of ''

The Iron Giant ''The Iron Giant'' is a 1999 American animated science fiction film produced by Warner Bros. Feature Animation and directed by Brad Bird in his directorial debut. It is based on the 1968 novel '' The Iron Man'' by Ted Hughes (which was publis ...

'' and ''Secondhand Lions''. The festival focuses on genre films such as horror film, horror, science fiction film, science fiction, fantasy film, fantasy, action film, action, Asian cinema, Asian, and cult status, cult. The festival takes place in September at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar, filling three screens for eight days and hosting many writers, directors and actors, both well established and unknown. A notable feature of this festival is the inclusion of "special screenings" by Knowles. For these screenings, the audience often does not know what the film will be until seated, moments before it begins. It also features many themed parties, outings, food/film "feasts", and other events that are signature hallmarks of the original

. In 2007, ''Variety (magazine), Variety'' publisher Charles Koones included Fantastic Fest as one of "ten festivals we love". In 2008, ''MovieMaker'' magazine named Fantastic Fest "one of the 25 film festivals worth the entry fee". The 2017 festival attracted attention due to the disclosure that League had re-hired Devin Faraci as a writer even though Faraci resigned from ''Birth.Movies.Death'' in 2016 after he was accused of sexual assault. Faraci's re-hiring prompted the resignation of Todd Brown, Fantastic Fest's director of international programming. Alamo Drafthouse/Fantastic Fest severed ties with

after sexual harassment/assault allegations pertaining to him also surfaced. Despite these events, Alamo Drafthouse proceeded with plans to show a previously-unreleased pornographic film by Ed Wood.

Drafthouse Films

In 2010, League founded the film distribution and production company known as Drafthouse Films.

Neon

In 2017, League co-founded another film distribution and production company known as Neon (company), Neon (stylized as "NEON") with entertainment executive Tom Quinn. Neon's films, including ''Parasite (2019 film), Parasite'' and ''I, Tonya'', have won several Academy Awards.

Criticism

In 2017, concurrent with the revelations regarding Devin Faraci and Harry Knowles's harassment of women, former Alamo Drafthouse employees alleged that they had complained to League and his wife Karrie about Knowles in previous years. They were told simply to "avoid" Knowles. These purported incidents go as far back as 2000. In late September 2017, League issued a statement apologizing on his and Karrie's behalf "To the women we have let down..."

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:League, Tim Culture of Austin, Texas Rice University alumni Shell plc people Theatre owners American film producers Living people Year of birth missing (living people)