Bradford Simonsen partnered with longtime friend, Writer/Director Kevin Hudson to bring to the screen the story of a little flower that overcomes great odds in the pursuit of a better life. Brad has a passion for Animation and is personally connected to the “immigrant theme” of Weeds. Simonsen is an American film maker best known for his Assistant Producing work at Walt Disney Animation Studios. He is currently working on the sequel to Wreck-It Ralph, and his credits include; Big Hero 6, Zootopia, Jack the Giant Slayer, Real Steel, Alice in Wonderland, Beowulf, Open Season, The Polar Express and The ChubbChubbs!. Brad graduated from Mead High School in Spokane Washington and went onto attend the University of Washington School of Business in Seattle, graduating with a degree in Marketing and Human Resource management. He was also very active in the University of Washington Drama department, acting, writing and helping produce stage plays. After attending University he moved to Los Angeles where he started his career Assistant Directing Low-Budget feature films. He went from live action production to Feature Film Development when he accepted an assistant job at Jan De Bont's production company. He then worked at Robert Redford’s production company, working his way up to Director of Production. The movies he worked on include; The Legend of Bagger Vance, Spy Game, How to Kill your Neighbor's’ Dog, Che Guevara “The Motorcycle Diaries,” The Haunting of Hill House, SLC Punk and others. While Director of Production he was in charge of budgets and schedules of future movies and became very interested in Visual Effects. He changed careers and landed a job at Sony Pictures Imageworks where he coordinated and was the voice for the main character “Meeper” in the Academy Award winning Animated Short Film “The ChubbChubbs”. He worked as a Digital Production Manager at Sony for nine years. He continued his career at Digital Domain as a Digital Producer, and is now at Walt Disney Animation Studios as an Assistant Producer where both films he has worked on, Big Hero 6 and Zootopia have won the Academy Award for “Best Animated Feature”.
Filmography[]
- Big Hero 6 - associate producer, departmental leadership
- Zootopia - co-associate producer (with Monica Lago-Kaytis), additional voices, departmental leadership
- Moana - departmental leadership
- Ralph Breaks the Internet - associate producer, additional voices, departmental leadership
- Us Again - producer
- Encanto - associate producer
- Moana 2 - additional associate producer