LOS ANGELES, USA // Michelle Hooper is the Executive Vice President of Marketing for Searchlight Pictures, where she has spent nearly two decades in leadership across publicity and marketing operations for the specialty studio. Founded in 1994 as Fox Searchlight Pictures, the company’s titles have grossed over $5 billion worldwide, amassing 52 Academy Awards including five Best Picture winners since 2009: Slumdog Millionaire, 12 Years a Slave, Birdman, The Shape of Water, and Nomadland; 64 BAFTA Awards; 10 Grammy Awards; and many more.

Searchlight’s upcoming releases include Martin McDonagh’s highly anticipated Wild Horse Nine starring John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, Tony Gilroy’s Behemoth! starring Pedro Pascal, Alice Birch’s directorial debut Sweetsick starring Cate Blanchett, the genre film Monitor from Matt Black and Ryan Polly, and Alexander Payne’s first non-English language film Somewhere Out There. Recent releases include Radio Silence’s Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, Mona Fastvold’s The Testament of Ann Lee, Bradley Cooper’s Is This Thing On?, HIKARI’s Rental Family, James Mangold’s 8-time Academy Award-nominated A Complete Unknown, Jesse Eisenberg’s Academy Award winner A Real Pain, Yorgos Lanthimos’ 4-time Academy Award winner Poor Things, and Andrew Haigh’s critically-acclaimed All of Us Strangers. Other past successful films under Hooper’s tenure include The Favourite, Jojo Rabbit, Summer of Soul, Isle of Dogs, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Jackie, Brooklyn, Wild, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Beasts of the Southern Wild, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Descendants, The Tree of Life, Black Swan, 127 Hours, Crazy Heart, 500 Days of Summer, The Wrestler, Juno, Once, and Little Miss Sunshine.

In 2022, Searchlight Television’s first production “The Dropout” from Elizabeth Meriwether, debuted on Hulu in partnership with 20th Studios, earning a Primetime Emmy Award for star Amanda Seyfried and an additional 5 nominations. Upcoming for Searchlight Television is Meriwether’s “Furious,” based on the 1987 film Black Widow and starring Emmy Rosum and Jake Lacy. Prior to joining Searchlight Pictures in 2006, Hooper spent four years at Fox Broadcasting where she was the Vice President of Entertainment Publicity. While at Fox Broadcasting, Hooper managed the department and spearheaded the launches of Emmy winning series such as “American Idol,” “Arrested Development” and “24.” Additionally, she supervised the continuing campaigns for the long running multi-award-winning series “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy” among many others. Prior to joining Fox, Hooper was the Director of Entertainment Communications at CBS Entertainment in New York where she was part of the team that launched and created the publicity campaign for the cultural phenomenon “Survivor”. Hooper shared the Publicist Guild of America’s prestigious Maxwell Weinberg Showmanship Award for her work on the latter reality series. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA).