Lianne Halfon

Lianne Halfon is an acclaimed American film producer who co-founded the independent production company Mr. Mudd with partners John Malkovich and Russell Smith.   While primarily focusing on film, the partners began their creative collaboration on the stage with Steppenwolf Theater’s Libra, an adaptation of Don Delillo’s iconic novel.  Later the producers would partner with Diego Luna on a Spanish translation of Zack Braff’s El Buen Canario, mounted in Mexico City at El Teatro de Los Insurgentes.

Film credits for Lianne include Ghost World, The Dancer Upstairs, Young Adult, Jeff Who Lives at Home, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Demolition and Juno, for which she received a Best Picture Academy Award® nomination.  Both Ghost World and The Perks of Being a Wallflower were nominated for Best First Features by Film Independent, with Perks winning the Spirit Award.  Ghost World, based on the comics of Dan Clowes, and Juno, also developed and packaged by Mr. Mudd, earned their talented first-time screenwriters Academy Award nominations.

Lianne has been active as a producer of documentaries, winning a news Emmy for Which Way Home, which was also nominated for an Academy Award.  She also executive produced Zwigoff’s Crumb (Grand Jury Prize at Sundance), John Walter and Andrew Moore’s How to Draw a Bunny (Special Jury Project at Sundance) and The First Amendment Project’s: Some Assembly Required. She is currently producing a 4-part documentary in collaboration with the Brooklyn Academy of Music about the ground-breaking opera Einstein on the Beach and its creators, Philip Glass and Robert Wilson, who keep the physicist at the center of their dreamlike exploration.

A member of the Producers Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and Producers United, Lianne was a recipient of the Crystal Award from Women in Film.