Virginia Film Festival

Jeff Wadlow

President, Jawline Inc.

Director and Executive Producer, Jeff Wadlow. is currently in production on Fantasy Island and Master of the Universe. In 2018, Jeff produced and directed, Truth or Dare, a screenplay he wrote and directed for Jason Blum and Universal Studios. Before that, he wrote and directed True Memoirs of an International Assassin, staring Kevin James and Andy Garcia, which was at the forefront of Netflix’s expansion into original movies. His preceding action comedy, Kick Ass 2, was named one of the ten best films of the year by Quentin Tarantino, who stated the movie demonstrated a “real auteur approach.”  While prepping that movie, Jeff developed and executive produced the worldwide hit, Non-Stop, starring Liam Neeson, in addition to writing the feature film X-Men/Deadpool spin-off, X-Force, for Fox and Ryan Reynolds.

A graduate of Dartmouth College and a Charlottesville native, Jeff received his master’s degree from the Peter Stark Producing Program at USC, where he conceived and directed his thesis film, tHE tOWeR oF BabBLe (narrated by Kevin Spacey), winning more than a dozen awards before taking the top prize in the Chrysler Million Dollar Film Festival. Jeff used the million-dollar grant to make his first feature, Cry_Wolf, which was released by Universal Studios. His next feature, the action/drama Never Back Down, starring two-time Academy Award nominee Djimon Hounsou, beat out big-budget competition to win “Best Fight” at the MTV Movie Awards and spawned a series of successful sequels. In television, Jeff’s first pitch sold in a competitive situation to CBS and Warner Brothers with Joel Silver (The Matrix) producing, eventually going to pilot. He followed that with another pilot order from CBS for his character-based procedural starring Minnie Driver. Jeff went on to collaborate with Cartlon Cuse (Lost) and Kerry Ehrin (Friday Night Lights) to help launch the Emmy-nominated series, Bates Motel, eventually working with Cuse again as a writer and producer on the final season of The Strain, created by Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) and Chuck Hogan (The Town). In addition to his film and TV work, Jeff has directed award-winning shorts staring acclaimed actors such as Meryl Streep and Danny DeVito. For the last fourteen years, Jeff has returned to his hometown to lead The Adrenaline Film Project, a program he founded to help filmmakers of all ages, write, shoot, and screen a short film in the Virginia Film Festival in just 72 hours. Through the Adrenaline Film Project, Jeff has helped produce more than two hundred short films, personally mentoring over six hundred aspiring filmmakers.