Advisor
John Lyons
John Lyons is a producer, who resides in New York City. He began his film casting career with Joel and Ethan Coen’s Raising Arizona in 1986 and went on to cast Fargo, Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, and The Big Lebowski. He also cast films for directors such as Phil Kaufman, Frank Oz, John Schlesinger, and others.
In 1989, Mr. Lyons became the Casting Director of the Sundance Institute’s June Director’s Lab for seven years. In 1999, he produced his first feature film, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Hard Eight. He also produced Mr. Anderson’s Boogie Nights, Jay Roach and Mike Myers’ Austin Powers: The Spy to Shagged Me, and Austin Powers in Goldmember and Peter Hedges’ Pieces of April.
From 2003 to 2011, Mr. Lyons was the President of Production at Focus Features, overseeing all aspects of production at the studio and shepherding the making of a popular and award-winning slate of films. These included Gus Van Sant’s MILK, Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, Joel and Ethan Coen’s Burn After Reading and A Serious Man, David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises, Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers, Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right, Mike Mills’ Beginners, Joe Wright’s Hanna, Cary Fukunaga’s sin Nombre and Jane Eyre, and Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
In 2011, Mr. Lyons left Focus Features to return to independent producing and is currently working on projects for film, television, and the theatre, including Universal’s 2015 film Sisters and Paolo Sorrentino’s HBO series The Young Pope.
