Daniel Goldberg, who produced all three The Hangover films, Space Jam, Old School and many others and co-wrote movies including the Bill Murray comedies Stripes and Meatballs, died today in Los Angeles. He was 74.
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Filmmaker Jason Reitman, whose late father Ivan Reitman directed Stripes and Meatballs and had known Goldberg since their college days in the 1960s, confirmed the news to Deadline but did not provide other details.
Goldberg and Ivan Reitman collaborated for more than 30 years, working together on features including the animated Heavy Metal (1981); toon/live-action hybrid Space Jam (1996), starring Michael Jordan alongside Looney Toons characters; 1994’s Junior, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as the world’s first pregnant man, along with Danny DeVito and Emma Thompson; the 1997 Robin Williams-Billy Crystal comedy Fathers’ Day; the 1998 Harrison Ford-Anne Heche adventure pic Six Days Seven Nights; Howard Stern’s Private Parts, which the shock jock infamously promoted at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival; Road Trip (2000); the 2001 sci-fi comedy Evolution, starring David Duchovny, Orlando Jones, Seann William Scott and Julianne Moore; the Heather Graham-Joseph Fiennes thriller Killing Me Softly (2002) and the Vince Vaughn-Luke Wilson-Will Ferrell comedy Old School (2003).
Goldberg got his start with Meatballs, the raunchy 1979 summer-camp comedy with Murray in his first big-starring starring role after having replaced Chevy Chase on Saturday Night Live. Years later, Goldberg also penned the second sequel Meatballs III: Summer Job.
He followed the original Meatballs with Stripes, the hilarious 1981 military comedy starring Murray and Harold Ramis, in the first of their several screen pairing that later would include the first two Ghostbusters films. Goldberg also produced Meatballs and Stripes, leading to a producing career that took off in the mid-’90s.
Goldberg also was a co-EP on HBO’s 1996 telepic The Late Shift, scoring an Emmy nom for the tale of the early-’90s battle between David Letterman and Jay Leno to take over hosting The Tonight Show after Johnny Carson’s retirement. He also was an executive producer on a pair of animated TV series based on features: Beethoven and Extreme Ghostbusters.
But Goldberg’s biggest film success was yet to come.
In 2009, he was a producer on The Hangover, the Vegas-set comedy starring Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Ken Jeong. The film was a smash hit, grossing nearly $470 million worldwide on a reported $35 million budget, and won Critics Choice and Golden Globe awards for Best Comedy Movie.
He also produced The Hangover Part II, its 2011 sequel that banked more than $586 million around the world, and the 2013 threequel The Hangover Part III. The latter was less of a hit but still scored a global gross of $382 million. The trilogy was directed by Todd Phillips, and Part III would mark Goldberg’s final screen credit.
He is survived by his wife, Ilona Herzberg; his sisters Kathy Hogg and Amy Goldberg; and his brother, Harris Goldberg.
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