Allison Shearmur

Allison Ivy Brecker was one of the quadruplets born to Martin and Rhoda Brecker on October 23, 1963. She grew up in a traditional Jewish household,^[3] and attended the University of Pennsylvania Law School. After completing her Juris Doctor at the USC Gould School of Law, she became a member of the State Bar of California. While at university, she entered a campus contest and won first prize, lunch with Stanley Jaffe, an executive at Columbia Pictures. Jaffe became a lifelong mentor and role model for Shearmur.^[3]

She married film composer Edward Shearmur, with whom she had two children. In 2014, the Shearmurs had a house featured in House Beautiful.^[4]

After graduation, Allison Shearmur was participated in a young executive management initiative, and was subsequently selected to become a manager in the comedy development department at Columbia TriStar. She worked at Disney as a vice-president between 1994 and 1997, where she worked on movies including George of the Jungle.^[2] She then joined Universal as an executive vice-president of production, and worked on Along Came Polly, Erin Brockovich and the American Pie and Bourne series.^[2]

Shearmur also worked for two years at Paramount as co-president of production, where she was responsible for the studio's literary productions such as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Stop-Loss, Zodiac, Dreamgirls, Charlotte's Web, Nacho Libre, and Failure to Launch.^[5] In 2008, she moved to Lionsgate as president of motion picture production. While at Lionsgate she produced the first two Hunger Games movies, then executive produced the final two.^[2]

Shearmur formed her own production company, Allison Shearmur Productions.^[1][2] In 2017, her company executive produced the television movie Dirty Dancing.^[2]

Allison Shearmur developed lung cancer and died from the disease at the age of fifty-four on January 19, 2018, at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles.^[1][2] The films Solo: A Star Wars Story, The One and Only Ivan and Chaos Walking were dedicated to her memory.