Rawson Marshall Thurber

Rawson Marshall Thurber was born in San Francisco and raised in the East Bay, in Orinda, California. He graduated cum laude with departmental honors from Union College in Schenectady, New York, with a BA in English and Theater Arts. He went on to earn an MFA in producing from the Peter Stark Program at the University of Southern California.

Shortly after graduation, he wrote and directed the short film "Terry Tate, Office Linebacker," which was accepted to the Sundance Film Festival in 2001 and soon became a much-heralded Super Bowl commercial, also written and directed by Thurber, which won advertising's highest honor: the Golden Lion Award at Cannes. The groundbreaking 60-second spot is continually ranked as one of the top three Super Bowl commercials of all time.

Thurber then directed his first feature screenplay, the 2004 hit comedy "Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story," starring Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn, which opened as the number one film in America and went on to make $167 million worldwide – a tremendous feat for a first-time writer/director.

Following that success, Thurber approached Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon, of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, about adapting the author's first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Thurber's film, "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh," starring Peter Sarsgaard, Sienna Miller, Nick Nolte, Mena Suvari and Jon Foster, was selected as one of 16 films, out of more than 3,600 submissions, for narrative competition at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, and was nominated for the prestigious Grand Jury Prize.

Thurber's third feature film, the raucous comedy "We're the Millers, starring Jennifer Aniston, Jason Sudeikis and Ed Helms, was a major hit of the 2103 summer, grossing more than $270 million, worldwide, making it the #1 original comedy of that year.

Warner Bros.