Bleecker Street CEO and indie film champion Andrew Karpen dies at 59

Andrew Karpen, main enforcement and laminitis of autarkic movie organisation institution Bleecker Street Media, died Monday of glioblastoma, a uncommon and assertive signifier of encephalon cancer. He was 59.

Karpen founded the New York City-based Bleecker Street successful 2014 with backing from 5-hour Energy laminitis Manoj Bhargava. In its archetypal fewer years, Bleecker Street released specified films arsenic 2015’s “Trumbo,” starring Bryan Cranston and Helen Mirren, and the Viggo Mortensen-led “Captain Fantastic” successful 2016.

Since its founding, Bleecker Street has released much than 75 films, including the 2017 Steven Soderbergh drama “Logan Lucky,” 2024’s Oscar-nominated “Golda,” comedy-drama “Hard Truths” and, astir recently, “The Wedding Banquet,” a remake of the 1993 Ang Lee romanticist drama starring Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone and Kelly Marie Tran.

“Our manufacture has mislaid a giant,” Kent Sanderson, Bleecker Street president and Karpen’s longtime friend, said successful a statement. “Andrew taught america each truthful much, foremost of which is the worth of kindness, honesty, and household supra each else. His enactment and courageousness volition animate each of america astatine Bleecker Street for the remainder of our lives, and we are dedicated to continuing his passionateness for and bequest of championing cinema.”

Karpen began his vocation astatine Miramax earlier moving to Oxygen Media arsenic its elder vice president of concern and planning. He past spent much than a decennary astatine Focus Features, the specialty movie limb of NBCUniversal, starting arsenic its main operating serviceman liable for finance, strategical readying and operations earlier rising to president and past co-chief executive.

He near Focus Features successful 2013, aft Universal Pictures named a caller caput of the specialty imprint and relocated its office from New York to the workplace batch successful California. Universal said astatine the clip that the institution asked Karpen to stay with the workplace but that helium opted to enactment successful New York with his family.

He is survived by his wife, Pam; sons Josh and Zack; girl Sloan; and Josh’s wife, Kristen, who is expecting their archetypal child.