Ido Ostrowsky (born 1979)[1] is an American film producer. He and his producing partner Nora Grossman run Bristol Automotive, a production company that they founded in 2012. He produced the 2014 film The Imitation Game, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture at the 87th Academy Awards.

Career

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Ostrowsky was raised in a Jewish family[2] and attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where he majored in mass communications. After graduating, he worked as an assistant in the television industry, which included a job as a writers' assistant on the series Gossip Girl. In 2009, after hearing about the official apology issued to computer scientist Alan Turing by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, he optioned the rights to Andrew Hodges' biography of Turing, Alan Turing: The Enigma, with his friend and producing partner Nora Grossman. Screenwriter Graham Moore wrote a screenplay based on the book and in 2011 Ostrowsky and Grossman sold the script to Warner Bros.[1] In 2012, they founded a production company, Bristol Automotive,[3] and reclaimed Moore's script from Warner Bros. since production had not started on the film after a year, as their contract stipulated.[4] They then partnered with a third producer, Teddy Schwarzman, who funded the film's budget. The final film, The Imitation Game, was released in 2014.[5]

Ostrowsky, Grossman and Schwarzman received numerous accolades for their work on The Imitation Game, including nominations for the Academy Award for Best Picture,[6] the BAFTA Award for Best Film,[7] and the Producers Guild of America Award for Best Theatrical Motion Picture.[8] Ostrowsky and Grossman were named among Variety's "10 Producers to Watch" in 2014.[4]

Personal life

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Ostrowsky was born in Israel[9] and moved to Los Angeles as a one-year-old in 1980.[1] He is of Russian-Jewish heritage and is openly gay.[9]

References

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  1. ^ a b c Weston, Eve (February 17, 2015). "How Two TV Assistants Turned Their Obsession Into an Oscar Nomination". LA Weekly. Retrieved June 15, 2016.
  2. ^ Jewish Business News: "The Jews of Oscar" January 15, 2015
  3. ^ Wloszczyna, Susan (January 27, 2015). "The Big O: How Nora Grossman of 'The Imitation Game' Broke the Code of Becoming a Woman Producer". Indiewire. Retrieved June 15, 2016.
  4. ^ a b Blair, Iain (November 11, 2014). "10 Producers to Watch: Ido Ostrowsky & Nora Grossman". Variety. Retrieved June 15, 2016.
  5. ^ Siegel, Tatiana (November 11, 2014). "Cracking the Code: How Two Out-of-Work Producers Brought 'Imitation Game' to the Screen". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved June 15, 2016.
  6. ^ "Oscar Nominations 2015: Full List". Variety. January 15, 2015. Retrieved June 15, 2016.
  7. ^ "Baftas 2015: full list of nominations". The Guardian. January 9, 2015. Retrieved June 15, 2016.
  8. ^ "Theatrical Motion Picture, Animated Theatrical and Long-Form TV Nominations Announced" (Press release). Producers Guild of America. January 5, 2015. Archived from the original on September 25, 2020. Retrieved June 15, 2016.
  9. ^ a b Pfefferman, Naomi (January 22, 2015). "Solving the enigma: Producing Alan Turing's story, against all odds". The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. Retrieved June 16, 2016.
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