Early life and education
Reitman was born in Montreal to director Ivan Reitman (1946-2022) and actress Genevieve Robert. He was raised largely in Los Angeles and holds dual Canadian and American citizenship. His sister Catherine Reitman, four years his junior, is an actress, writer, and producer; a second sister, Caroline, is the youngest of the three siblings.1
Because his father was a working filmmaker, Reitman spent much of his childhood on and around movie sets, and it was there that he developed his interest in directing. He attended the Harvard-Westlake School in Studio City, graduating in 1995, where he competed as a high jumper. He briefly enrolled at Skidmore College in New York as a pre-med student before transferring to the University of Southern California, where he earned a bachelor's degree in English and creative writing. At USC he performed with the improv comedy group Commedus Interruptus.1
Career
Reitman began directing in the late 1990s, making a series of short films, including Operation, In God We Trust, Gulp, and Consent, alongside television commercials for brands such as Walmart, Burger King, Nintendo, and BMW.1
His feature directorial debut was Thank You for Smoking (2005), which he also adapted from Christopher Buckley's satirical novel about a tobacco-industry lobbyist. The film was a critical and commercial success and won Reitman the Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay. He followed it with Juno (2007), a comedy-drama about teen pregnancy written by Diablo Cody. Juno was a major hit and earned four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director for Reitman; Cody won for Best Original Screenplay.2
Reitman's next film, Up in the Air (2009), starring George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, and Anna Kendrick, brought him his greatest awards recognition. Adapted from Walter Kirn's novel, it earned six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and three for Reitman personally: Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and as a producer. He won the Golden Globe and BAFTA awards for the film's screenplay.2
His subsequent directorial work includes Young Adult (2011), a second collaboration with Diablo Cody starring Charlize Theron; Labor Day (2013); Men, Women & Children (2014); Tully (2018), a third Cody collaboration; and The Front Runner (2018), about the Gary Hart presidential campaign. In 2024 he directed and co-wrote Saturday Night, a real-time dramatization of the chaotic ninety minutes before the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live on October 11, 1975.
Reitman has also worked extensively as a producer, with credits including Jennifer's Body (2009), Jeff, Who Lives at Home (2011), and the Oscar-winning Whiplash (2014) as an executive producer. (The Fandom corpus snapshot incorrectly lists him as director of Jennifer's Body, which was directed by Karyn Kusama; Reitman produced it.) In television he directed two episodes of The Office, the segment-based Home Movie: The Princess Bride (2020), and six episodes of the Hulu series Casual (2015-2017), on which he also served as an executive producer across its full forty-four-episode run. Since 2011 he has hosted the Live Read series of staged screenplay readings at Film Independent and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.1
Ghostbusters
Family cameo and Ghostbusters II (1989)
Reitman has a brief cameo in Ghostbusters II credited as "Jason (Brownstone Boy)."5 His connection to the franchise, however, predates that appearance. The Reitman family had originally been planned for a cameo in the original 1984 Ghostbusters, appearing as panicked residents fleeing 550 Central Park West during the climax. The shot was abandoned after the first take, when both Jason and his sister Catherine became too frightened to continue and Jason refused to do a second take.
The deleted footage was later found stored in salt mines in Kansas by the studio, and a portion of it was incorporated into Ghostbusters: Afterlife, appearing in the scene where Gary Grooberson shows Phoebe and Podcast footage of the Manhattan Crossrip of 1984 on a laptop.6 Reitman was also present during the original film's special-effects tests and the recording of its score, and he kept a piece of the shaving cream dumped on Walter Peck actor William Atherton in his bedroom for years.
In December 2012, years before Afterlife entered production, Reitman staged a live read of the original Ghostbusters screenplay at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The cast included Seth Rogen as Peter Venkman, Jack Black as Ray Stantz, Rainn Wilson as Egon Spengler, Phil LaMarr as Winston Zeddemore, Kristen Bell as Dana Barrett, Kevin Pollak as Mayor Lenny and Walter Peck, Mae Whitman as Janine Melnitz, and Paul Rust as Louis Tully.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)
Reitman served as co-writer, director, and co-producer on Ghostbusters: Afterlife, his return to the franchise as a creative lead rather than a peripheral participant. He co-wrote the film with Gil Kenan, who went on to direct the sequel.31
Several story elements originated directly with Reitman. The line "There is no Mom, only Zuul" was his idea. The scene in which Phoebe Spengler explains to Trevor Spengler what a capacitor is was inspired by a real conversation in which Adam Savage once explained capacitors to Reitman; on the day of filming, Reitman texted Savage to verify the correct delivery, and Savage replied with two different reads for him to use.7 The hardware store that appears in the film, Wertheimer's Hardware, is named after Reitman's lawyer, Alan Wertheimer.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)
Reitman served as co-writer and producer on Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, with Gil Kenan taking the director's chair.41 Reitman also directed the film's post-credits end-tag sequence, though that contribution went uncredited in the final release.
Reitman's daughter, Josephine, appears in Frozen Empire as one of the teenagers trapped in the Wonder Wheel cab. The ghost character Pukey, a spectral pug featured in the film, was inspired by Reitman's own affection for pugs.
Untitled Netflix animated series
Reitman is attached as an executive producer on a forthcoming untitled Ghostbusters animated series in development at Netflix.
Franchise acknowledgment
On the variant cover of Ghostbusters: Dead Man's Chest Issue #3, one of the street signs depicted in the artwork reads "Reitman," an in-universe nod to the family's central role in the franchise's history.8
Personal life
Reitman married actress Michele Lee in 2004; their daughter, Josephine, was born in 2006. The couple divorced in 2014.1
Ghostbusters credits
- Ghostbusters II (1989): Actor (Jason, Brownstone Boy)
- Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021): Co-Writer, Director, Co-Producer
- Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024): Co-Writer, Producer; uncredited director of the end tag
- Ghostbusters animated series (Netflix, untitled, in development): Executive Producer
Selected non-Ghostbusters works
- Thank You for Smoking (2005): Director, Writer
- Juno (2007): Director
- Up in the Air (2009): Director, Writer, Producer
- Jennifer's Body (2009): Producer
- Young Adult (2011): Director, Producer
- Labor Day (2013): Director, Writer, Producer
- Men, Women & Children (2014): Director, Writer, Producer
- Whiplash (2014): Executive Producer
- Tully (2018): Director, Producer
- The Front Runner (2018): Director, Writer, Producer
- Saturday Night (2024): Director, Writer, Producer
- Casual (TV series, 2015-2017): Director (six episodes), Executive Producer (forty-four episodes)
References
Some content on this page was researched using the Ghostbusters Wiki on Fandom.
