LOS ANGELES, USA // David Furnish is CEO of Rocket Entertainment and Chairman of the Elton John AIDS Foundation.

He took the reins at Rocket Entertainment in 2015 with the aim of modernising and refocusing the business globally for a modern era, while also managing Elton John full time.

In particular this involved conceiving Elton John’s ‘Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour’, for which he is the Creative Director. Since its award-winning launch, the tour is without doubt one of the biggest and most spectacular finales in music history, seeing Elton play 330 shows across five continents for more than five years. In celebration of Elton’s final tour dates in North America, Furnish served as Producer on the first-of-its-kind, live, concert special with Disney+ entitled “Elton John Live: Farewell From Dodger Stadium.” The once-in-a-lifetime, live, global original concert was available for fans worldwide and most recently received 3 EMMY nominations.

As a producer, David also worked on bringing multi award winning ‘Rocketman’, the epic fantasy musical motion picture of Elton’s life, to the silver screen in 2019. The film was critically lauded and went on to make over $200 million at the Box Office as well as winning an Oscar, two Golden Globes and a Critics Choice Award.

Under David’s tenure as CEO of Rocket Entertainment he has also overseen the strategy for some of the most successful and impactful campaigns Elton has ever undertaken.

This includes the release of ‘Diamonds’, his Ultimate Greatest Hits collection. The album is now Diamond certified in the UK, and has spent over 270 consecutive weeks in the official UK album charts, over 160 of those in the top 20.

David also spearheaded the deal that saw the publication of Elton’s first official autobiography ‘Me’, which became an instant global bestseller and helped it sell over a million copies.

As a theatrical producer, David was a founding producer for ‘Billy Elliot the Musical’, and worked closely on conceiving and developing the show from its initial workshop to award-winning productions in London, Sydney and New York. He is currently producing two new stage musicals ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ and ‘Tammy Faye’.

A tireless campaigner, and as Chairman of The Elton John Aids Foundation David is a leading voice in the worldwide fight against HIV and AIDS. To date they have raised in excess of $525 million to fund prevention and treatment.