At the age of 16, he started working as an assistant to theater producer
Kermit Bloomgarden. Later, Rudin worked for producers
Robert Whitehead and
Emanuel Azenberg. Instead of attending college, Rudin took a job as a
casting director and thereafter started his own company. His new firm
cast many Broadway shows, including
Annie (1977) for
Mike Nichols. He also cast
PBS's
Verna: USO Girl (1978), starring
Sissy Spacek and
William Hurt, and the mini-series
The Scarlet Letter (1979), starring
Meg Foster,
Kevin Conway and
John Heard, as well as the films
King of the Gypsies (1978),
The Wanderers (1979),
Simon (1980) with
Alan Arkin, and
Resurrection (1980).
Film producer In 1980, Rudin moved to
Los Angeles, taking up employment at
Edgar J. Scherick Associates, where he served as producer on a variety of films, including ''I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can
(1981), the NBC miniseries Little Gloria... Happy at Last (1982), and the Oscar-winning documentary He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin' (1983). Previously, Harvey Weinstein and Rudin had public confrontations during the production of The Hours'' (2002), which Rudin produced for Miramax Films when it was a studio subsidiary under
Disney. Rudin later said he and Weinstein "are both control freaks. We both want to run our own shows. When I'm doing a Miramax movie, I work for him. And I don't like that feeling. I chafe under that. I especially chafe under it when I feel that I'm on a leash." Rudin's projects in the 2010s have included lower-budget, independent films. In 2017 and 2018, Rudin and studio
A24 released three films about adolescence by first-time writer/directors:
Greta Gerwig's
Lady Bird,
Bo Burnham's
Eighth Grade and
Jonah Hill's
Mid90s. In 2015, he signed a television production deal with Fox.
Sony Pictures email leak On December 9, 2014, a major illegal breach of Sony's computer systems by "Guardians of Peace" hackers using
Shamoon malware led to disclosure of many gigabytes of stolen information, including internal company documents. In subsequent news coverage SPE Co-Chair
Amy Pascal and Scott Rudin were noted to have had an email exchange about Pascal's upcoming encounter with President
Barack Obama that included characterizations described as racist. The two had suggested that upon meeting the president they should mention films about African Americans, such as
Django Unchained,
12 Years a Slave,
The Butler, and
Amistad which all discuss
slavery in the United States or the pre-civil rights era. Rudin was one of Broadway's most prolific commercial producers. His first Broadway play,
David Henry Hwang's
Face Value in 1993, was produced alongside Stuart Ostrow and
Jujamcyn Theaters, and it closed after eight preview performances. He started a deal with Jujamcyn to develop and produce new plays for the theater chain. In 1994, Rudin won the
Best Musical Tony Award for his production of
Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's
Passion. The following year, he co-produced
Kathleen Turner's Broadway comeback,
Indiscretions, and
Ralph Fiennes' New York stage debut in
Hamlet. In 1996, Rudin produced the revival of the Stephen Sondheim and
Larry Gelbart musical
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, for which
Nathan Lane won his first Tony Award. His subsequent productions and co-productions have included
Skylight,
The Goat or Who Is Sylvia?,
Seven Guitars,
The Ride Down Mt. Morgan,
Copenhagen,
Deuce,
The History Boys,
Beckett/Albee,
Closer,
The Blue Room,
Doubt, ''
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,
The Year of Magical Thinking,
A Behanding in Spokane,
God of Carnage,
The House of Blue Leaves, and Exit the King.'' In 2010, Rudin and
Carole Shorenstein Hays produced the first Broadway revival of
August Wilson's
Pulitzer Prize-winning play
Fences, directed by
Kenny Leon and starring
Denzel Washington and
Viola Davis.
Fences garnered ten
Tony Award nominations and three wins, including Best Revival of a Play, Best Actor for Washington, and Best Actress for Davis. He would later produce the
2016 film adaptation of Fences. The following year, Rudin was a producer for the Broadway musical
The Book of Mormon, which opened in March 2011 at the
Eugene O'Neill Theatre. The show won nine
Tony Awards including Best Musical The production has played more than 3,740 Broadway performances as of March 15, 2020. Since 2011, Rudin has won Tony Awards for producing
Arthur Miller's
Death of a Salesman (directed by
Mike Nichols and starring
Philip Seymour Hoffman and
Andrew Garfield),
Lorraine Hansberry's
A Raisin in the Sun (starring
Denzel Washington),
David Hare's
Skylight (directed by
Stephen Daldry and starring Carey Mulligan and Bill Nighy),
Stephen Karam's
The Humans,
Ivo van Hove's staging of
Arthur Miller's
A View From The Bridge, and the record-breaking revival of
Hello, Dolly! starring
Bette Midler. Other notable productions include
Larry David's
Fish in the Dark, a hit comedy with more than $13.5 million in advance sales at the box office, a record at the time. Rudin left the Pulitzer Prize-winning play
Clybourne Park in February 2012, ahead of an April opening, due to a feud with writer
Bruce Norris that was unrelated to the play. In 2015, it was announced that Rudin would produce
Groundhog Day, a musical adaptation of the 1993
film of the same title, originally starring
Bill Murray.
Tim Minchin wrote the music and lyrics, and screenwriter
Danny Rubin wrote the book. Rudin withdrew from the production in June 2016, citing creative differences with the production team. In 2013, after
New York Times theater reporter
Patrick Healy published an interview with
Colm Toibin, the author of Rudin's financially unsuccessful
The Testament of Mary, Rudin ran an advertisement in the
Times, saying: "Let's give a big cuddly shout-out to Pat Healy, infant provocateur and amateur journalist at
The New York Times. Keep it up, Pat -- one day perhaps you'll learn something about how Broadway works, and maybe even understand it." In 2016, in a throwback to an earlier practice on Broadway, Rudin demanded that all critics attend the opening night performance of his production of
The Front Page, which starred
Nathan Lane,
John Slattery,
John Goodman,
Holland Taylor, and
Robert Morse. (Typically, critics are invited to several performances prior to opening night, giving them ample time to file reviews.) In a public dispute,
The Hollywood Reporter critic David Rooney, who had a conflict on the date of the opening, balked at the change, adding: "You know nobody works at that pace anymore, right?" Rudin shot back: "Critics reviewed shows on Broadway this way for 100 years. You can do it for one night. Get over it." Rooney's rave review eventually ran two days later than other New York critics, on October 23.
To Kill a Mockingbird legal disputes Rudin produced the first Broadway production of
Harper Lee's
To Kill a Mockingbird, newly adapted for the stage by
Aaron Sorkin, directed by
Bartlett Sher, and starring
Jeff Daniels. The production opened to critical acclaim at the
Shubert Theatre on December 13, 2018. During the week ending December 23, 2018, the production grossed more than $1.5 million, breaking the record for box-office grosses for a non-musical play in a theater owned by
The Shubert Organization. In March 2018, prior to the play's opening, the Harper Lee estate filed a lawsuit against the play's production company based on allegations that the play deviates too much from the novel. Sorkin had previously admitted that, "As far as Atticus and his virtue goes, this is a different take on
Mockingbird than Harper Lee's or
Horton Foote's. He becomes Atticus Finch by the end of the play, and while he's going along, he has a kind of running argument with Calpurnia, the housekeeper, which is a much bigger role in the play I just wrote. He is in denial about his neighbors and his friends and the world around him, that it is as racist as it is, that a Maycomb County jury could possibly put Tom Robinson in jail when it's so obvious what happened here. He becomes an apologist for these people." The following month, producer Rudin countersued for breach of contract. The legal dispute was settled by May 2018. Prior to the run of Sorkin's adaptation, another version of the play by Christopher Sergel had been available for license for more than 50 years. Since the opening of Sorkin's adaptation, lawyers acting for Atticus Limited Liability Company (ALLC) – the company formed by Rudin for the Broadway production of
To Kill a Mockingbird – claimed worldwide exclusivity for professional stage rights to
any adaptation of Lee's book. The company has moved aggressively to shut down all other productions of
To Kill a Mockingbird staged within 25 miles of any city ALLC determines to be a major metropolitan center that might eventually host the Sorkin adaptation – even though the companies had been legally granted rights by
Dramatic Publishing Co. to produce the Sergel adaptation. One of the amateur companies, The Grand Theatre, estimated that the cancellation of
Mockingbird would cost the theater some $20,000. == Misconduct allegations ==