Jake Kasdan Biography:
Date of Birth: October 28, 1974
Son of film director Lawrence Kasdan, Jake's entrance into the world of the silver screen was a natural one as he grew up on his father's movie sets. Determined to become a director as early as age five, Jake took his first professional job as a production assistant on the film Grand Canyon (1991).
While in high school, he started to write and direct plays. His most successful was called The Behavioral Patterns of Funnyman Tyler Hudson, which also ran at the Hollywood Playhouse.
While his father was filming Wyatt Earp in 1994, Jake wrote a short film and was a "documentarian," writing and compiling the companion book to his father's film. But the movie failed to gain much interest in the box office and his book was never published. Four years later, at the age of 22, Jake had penned and directed his first feature film, Zero Effect (1998).
The film received mixed reviews and Jake decided to take on the small screen for a couple of years. Directing episodes of Freaks and Geeks, Grosse Pointe and Undeclared gave him more confidence in his ability and for the start of this millennium, he started directing feature films again such as Orange County (2002), Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) and Bad Teacher (2011). Jake's more recent directorial credits include Sex Tape (2014), Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) and the sequel, Jumanji: The Next Level (2019).