Talk:Jeff Kleeman

COI Disclosure

I have a personal connection to Jeff Kleeman and will conform to Wikipedia conflict of interest policies for this biography page or any other page connected to him. Teatro377 (talk) 17:16, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Paywalled Sources

A number of the sources used as references are behind a paywall with limited access, or are only available in books. I’ve provided excerpts for each reference below:

The following is used to describe Kleeman’s role as a studio executive in the Lead:

Some Kind of Hero

2015, The History Press Authors: Matthew Field & Ajay Chowdhury

In August 1993 MGM/UA chairman Frank Mancuso appointed veteran studio executive John Calley as the new president of United Artists.1 A decade earlier Calley had been a key executive at Warner Brothers, the distributor behind Never Say Never Again. Production Vice-President Jeff Kleeman was brought on board as the ailing studio looked to revive the James Bond franchise.However, early research was not positive, as Kleeman recalled, ‘The reasons were primarily that most teenage boys did not know who James Bond was, or if they did, they knew him as, “that guy my father likes.” From MGM/UA’s perspective, Bond was a relic of its past that people loved but didn’t know what to do with. Frank Mancuso fully empowered John Calley, “Whether it makes sense to me or not, I trust you creatively.”’2 Kleeman remembered the United Artists’ analysis, ‘The worst that could happen is it loses a little bit of money. On home video, nicely packaged with the other Bond movies it’ll be okay. The name of the game internally at the studio was how cheaply can you make the movie?’3

The following is used to describe Kleeman’s role with United Artists in the Lead:

How GoldenEye made the world believe in Bond again

October 8, 1993, The Telegraph Author: Tom Fordy

In Pierce Brosnan’s 007 debut, GoldenEye – and for the first time in the character’s cinematic history – James Bond went to Russia. Previous adventures had stemmed from Russian chicanery, of course – bushy- eyebrowed Soviets plotting against the West, or sultry double agents sent to be seduced by Roger Moore – but no Bond film had been shot there until 1995’s GoldenEye. Much had changed since Bond’s last adventure – the Timothy Dalton- starring Licence to Kill – was released in the summer of 1989. Six years on, the Cold War had ended, the Berlin Wall tumbled down, and the Soviet Union was dissolved. The world in which Bond had operated for decades – the world that necessitated Bond existed at all – was gone, effectively dismantled. Now Bond, returning from a prolonged hiatus, was scrambling to find his place in the post-Cold War world – which he partly did by joyriding a 36-ton tank through St. Petersburg, smashing through statues, walls, and balustrades.There was some reluctance to send the production to Russia, with concerns about Russian Mafia in the air, and just days into the second unit filming there, the tank chase hit an administrative blockade. The St. Petersburg authorities suddenly decided that Bond was causing too much damage (though all destroyed artefacts had been made by the art department). “The St Petersburg militia showed up,” recalls Jeff Kleeman, then Production Vice President at United Artists. “They explained that they had orders to shoot anybody who rolled film,” says producer Anthony Waye. “They shut us down. The mayor wanted to renegotiate – as he put it – now that he understood the extent of what we were really doing. Read into that however you like. But we had a problem. They woke up to realise that they could make more money from us with our tanks running around the streets.”To complete the sequence, St. Petersburg was recreated at Leavesden Studios in Watford, built on old aerodrome runways, so Bond could tear through the streets with little regard for historical buildings. There is a post- Cold War irony to it: that Bond’s first venture into Russia saw him retreat

back to Blighty.

Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film

2005, Simon and Schuster Author: Peter Biskind

The following is used to describe Kleeman’s role at Sundance Productions in the Lead:

Redford had used the festival as a platform to publicize new initiatives in the past and this year was no different. He announced the formation of Sundance Productions, to be headed by Jeff Kleeman, a veteran production executive whom Redford had lured from MGM.

The following is used to describe Kleeman’s role in the production of the film GoldenEye in Career:

Some Kind of Hero

2015, The History Press Authors: Matthew Field & Ajay Chowdhury

The team behind GoldenEye had been raised with Bond. Goldfinger was the first film Brosnan had seen when he arrived in London at the age of eleven.226 Martin Campbell recalled watching Dr. No with his mother in his native New Zealand. Title designer Daniel Kleinman recalled his die-cast Aston Martin DB5 and his collection of James Bond bubble-gum cards from the mid-sixties.227 Bruce Feirstein described seeing Goldfinger for the first time with his parents at a drive-in in New Jersey.228 Famke Janssen remembered that with each new Bond film, ‘the entire family would go to see it en masse’ in Holland,229 and Robbie Coltrane revealed how, as a child, he would ‘imagine having an Aston Martin DB5 and going to a casino and knowing what to do.’230 However, Kleeman recalled industry expectation for GoldenEye was not high,231 ‘We were making a movie based on a character who, as we said, all market research indicated young male audiences were barely aware of. We were using a director who had never directed a commercially successful feature. We were using

an actor who was known for a television series that was now off the air.

The following is used to describe Kleeman’s role in the production of the film Tomorrow Never Dies in Career:

Some Kind of Hero

2015, The History Press Authors: Matthew Field & Ajay Chowdhury

In May 1995 Bond 18 was green lit.15 UA Senior Vice-President Jeff Kleeman16 noted the initial American reaction to GoldenEye was positive and the teaser trailer was playing well,17 prompting Kleeman to seek ‘stories and writers. Our feeling was that although GoldenEye was not released across the world until December 1995, it was worth spending $200,000 to get a script moving.’ Reaching a new generation with the phenomenal success of Nintendo’s tie-in video game, Kleeman saw the ‘tremendous awareness of

Bond. We had to make the next movie very quickly.’ (...) Feirstein titled the script Tomorrow Never Lies inspired by the Beatles track‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. As UA prepared a press release to announce the title, Jeff Kleeman recalled that a publicist mistakenly typed, ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’, but ‘we thought that was the better title. All thanks to a typo in a press release.’

The following is used to describe Kleeman’s role in the production of the film The World is Not Enough in Career:

Some Kind of Hero

2015, The History Press Authors: Matthew Field & Ajay Chowdhury

Jeff Kleeman became part of the new MGM team and continued production executive on the Bond franchise. (...) On Monday 11 January 1999 The World Is Not Enough began filming at Pinewood Studios. (...) Jeff Kleeman noted that Eon’s production schedule had been relentless since 1994, ‘We had got a movie into the theatres every other year, we were essentially making one movie on top of the other without any break. We were in pre-production, production or post. There was no down time. I don’t know of another franchise in Hollywood that had the kind of production schedule that

we had. Everyone was a little tired.’

Teatro377 (talk) 17:17, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

References

Request to add infobox

I’d like to request that an editor review the following request to add an image and infobox. I have a COI as a personal connection of the subject of the article. Thanks!

1. What I think should be changed:

Please add an infobox to the article:

Jeff Kleeman
Jeff Kleeman
Born	La Jolla, California, U.S.
Alma mater	Yale University
Occupations	Studio executive producer
Years active	1987–present

Why I think it should be changed:

All of the information requested above has already been established with citations in the body of the article. Infoboxes seem to be standard features on Wikipedia articles and adding one here will make the page more readable.

Thanks for reviewing. Teatro377 (talk) 19:13, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

 Done. Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 06:07, 16 December 2025 (UTC)

References