Jon Peters

Peters made his Hollywood debut in Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956) as the boy on the donkey crossing the Red Sea. He went on to be a hard-case kid who spent his formative years in and out of reform school. Peters entered the family business of hairdressing at age 14. Armed with an instinctive genius for self-promotion, he amassed a huge celebrity clientele at his trendy Jon Peters Salon on Rodeo Drive, raking in millions by merchandising the salon's ancillary cosmetic products. Privy to confidences that the rich and famous only reveal to their hairdressers, Peters became hip to the ways and means of Hollywood.

In 1973, he fell in love with his client Barbra Streisand and proceeded to manage her early music and film career.

Produced Barbra Streisand's critically-reviled (though commercially successful) 1974 album "ButterFly" in collaboration with Tom Scott, Larry Carlton, Lee Holdridge, Hank Cicalo, John Bahler, King Errisson, etc. Songs on the album included: Love in the Afternoon / Guava Jelly / Grandma's Hands / I Won't Last a Day Without You / Jubilation / Simple Man / Life On Mars / Since I Don't Have You / Crying Time / Let the Good Times Roll

He produced her 1976 remake of A Star is Born (1976) which yielded over $100 million at the box office and four Oscar nominations including the Oscar-winning song, "Evergreen". Peters went on to produce a string of best-selling Streisand albums, "The Main Event", The Eyes of Laura Mars" and "Caddyshack". Peters blossomed into an A-list producer, a status he's maintained over 30 years.

In 1980, Peters teamed with former Casablanca Records and Filmworks exec Peter Guber; together with Neil Bogart, Peters and Guber formed the Polygram Productions, later renamed the Boardwalk Company.

The team's willingness to take enormous chances with huge amounts of money transformed Guber and Peters into the wunderkind of Hollywood, especially after such critical and financial successes as Missing (1982), Flashdance (1983), The Color Purple (1985), Witches of Eastwick (1987), Gorillas in the Mist (1988), and Rain Man (1989). Guber-Peters acquired Chuck Barris Productions (The Gong Show, The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game), cementing their role in television as Guber-Peters-Barris.

A series of mergers and sell-offs later, Guber-Peters was born in 1983.

It was his idea to cast actor Michael Keaton in the title role of Batman (1989) after seeing him in Clean and Sober (1988). Director Tim Burton was in disbelief, but after showing Burton "Clean and Sober" and doing a screen test, they both saw how Keaton would fit the part.

Purchased the film rights to the Superman franchise in the early 1990s from Warner Bros. For Man of Steel (2013), he was paid a seven figure fee up front and promised a percentage of the profits, in exchange for being banned from the set and doing no publicity for the film. This was reportedly at the behest of producer Christopher Nolan.

When Kevin Smith was hired as writer for the "Superman Reborn" movie back in 1997, he had several discussions with Peters about the film. Peters told Smith that he didn't want Superman to wear the suit, he didn't want him to fly, and he wanted Superman to fight a giant spider in the end. When Smith left the project, the "Superman Reborn"" movie by Smith never got made but, in 1999, Jon Peters produced Wild Wild West (1999) which had the heroes attacked by a giant spider in the end.

Received a star at the Hollywood Walk of Fame on May 1, 2007. [May 2007]

His ex-wife Mindy Peters sued for a substantial portion of the cut he received for Man of Steel (2013).

Was credited as a producer on A Star Is Born (2018) only because he held the rights to the previous version, A Star is Born (1976). Bradley Cooper stated in several interviews that Peters had no involvement with his version and was in fact barred from the set.