Directory Profile

TOM JACOBSON has had success in the motion picture and television business both as a major studio chief and as a hands-on producer of hit movies. Jacobson’s debut as a film producer came on John Hughes’ classic comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Partnered with Hughes, Jacobson produced Uncle Buck, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and The Great Outdoors.

As an executive, Jacobson was President of Worldwide Production at Twentieth Century Fox, where he supervised such blockbusters as Home Alone, Home Alone 2, Speed, Die Hard: Die Harder and Die Hard With A Vengeance, Broken Arrow, True Lies and Independence Day. 

?Jacobson also served as Co-President of Paramount Pictures, supervising many of the studio’s high-profile projects, including being a key member of the team that brought the billion-dollar Transformers franchise to Paramount. As a film executive, Jacobson has supervised over seventy-five movies. 

Other selected producing credits include, the Coen Brother’s The Ladykillers, starring Tom Hanks, Mission to Mars and Mighty Joe Young for Disney; and Explorers, Top Secret and Flashdance for Paramount. In TV, Jacobson produced Proof, a drama series inspired by his own original idea for TNT.

Jacobson attended Yale University, where he studied documentary filmmaking with Academy Award® winning filmmaker Peter Davis. Jacobson is a long-standing member of the Director’s Guild of America, the Producer’s Guild, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where, in addition to participating as an Academy Gold mentor he has served on the Executive Committee for International Films.