Kevin Burns
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Kevin Burns is the creator and executive producer of nearly five-hundred hours of non-fiction and documentary television programs. His work can be seen on FOX, National Geographic Channel, E!, Animal Planet, AMC, Bravo and The History Channel. In 2003 he received his first of two Emmy Awards as Executive Producer for A&E’s Biography series. That same year he was tapped by George Lucas and Lucasfilm to produce and direct the 150 minute documentary feature, Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy. In 2005, he teamed up with Superman Returns director Bryan Singer to produce and direct, Look, Up in the Sky: The Amazing Story of Superman.
A film and television fan since childhood, Burns received a master’s degree in film from Boston University’s College of Communication in 1981. After graduation, Burns taught film production at the university, as well as heading the school's 'Film Unit', a group that allowed students to gain real world experience by producing commercials and other projects for clients. In 1988, he moved to Los Angeles, where he began working as an executive at Twentieth Century Fox Television.
While at Fox, Burns co-founded Foxstar Productions, the production unit responsible for creating a series of Alien Nation movies for television. In 1994, while serving as Senior VP of Foxstar, Burns founded Van Ness Films, a non-fiction and documentary production unit. That same year, he met Jon Jashni, a Fox film executive who shared Burns' interest in the works of legendary Hollywood producer, Irwin Allen. In 1999, Burns and Jashni formed Synthesis Entertainment and began developing and producing remakes and sequels of the Allen properties, most notably the feature film versions of Poseidon (2006) and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (scheduled for release in 2009). A television pilot for The Time Tunnel was produced for the Fox Network in 2002 and which was later released on DVD in 2006.
As president of Prometheus Entertainment (also formed in 1999), Burns continued to create and produce film and television programming, most notably The Girls Next Door on E! (about the adventures of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner's three live-in girlfriends) and Hollywood Science (for National Geographic Channel). His current projects include High Maintenance 90210 (a reality series for the E! Network), Star Wars: Legacy (a feature-length documentary for Lucasfilm and The History Channel), and T-Minus 50 (a 50th Anniversary project for NASA that will be co-produced by Bryan Singer).
