Allan Loeb

Allan Loeb (born July 25, 1969) is an American screenwriter and film and television producer. He wrote the 2007 film Things We Lost in the Fire and created the 2008 television series New Amsterdam. He wrote the film drama 21, which also was released in 2008. Among his other credits, he wrote and produced The Switch (2010). He also co-wrote Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010), and wrote The Dilemma (2011), and Just Go with It (2011). He performed a rewrite for the musical Rock of Ages (2012), and the mixed martial arts comedy Here Comes the Boom (2012).

Loeb was born to a Jewish family^[1] in Highland Park, Illinois,^[2] the son of Elsie and Henry Loeb. He attended Ithaca College in New York from 1988 to 1992,^[3] dropping out to work at the Chicago Board of Trade.^[2] He relocated to Los Angeles, California in 1993 to pursue a career in screenwriting.^[3][4] In 2004, after graduating from the University of California, Los Angeles,^[5] he moved to New York to write the script for The Only Living Boy in New York, which was eventually made into a 2017 film. Loeb returned to Los Angeles and continued writing his script with the help of Little Miss Sunshine producers Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa. He also joined Gamblers Anonymous to address his gambling addiction, which he claims changed his writing for the better.^[4] Around this time, Loeb began work on his next script, Things We Lost in the Fire.

Things We Lost in the Fire was met with mixed reviews and was a box office failure grossing only around $8 million worldwide. In 2008, Loeb shared 'screenplay' credit with Peter Steinfeld on the film 21 (2008 film), produced by and starring Kevin Spacey. In 2010, Loeb wrote The Switch,^[4] which premiered in August 2010. The film received relatively poor reviews and grossed nearly $50 million worldwide. He also co-wrote Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps directed by Oliver Stone. The film received generally favorable reviews and earned $135 million worldwide at the box office. In addition, he wrote a pair of 2011 films, The Dilemma and Just Go With It, which grossed $67 and $215 million, respectively.

Loeb rewrote the $75 million 1980s rock musical Rock of Ages, starring Tom Cruise, which Loeb received a shared 'screenplay' credit on. The film was a box office disappointment grossing only $56 million worldwide upon its release in June 2012.^[6] Additionally Loeb co-wrote, along with Kevin James, the script to the mixed martial arts comedy Here Comes the Boom.

Loeb also rewrote the 2015 earthquake disaster 3D project San Andreas at New Line Cinema, and the action comedy The Machine, with Vin Diesel attached to produce and star at MGM.^[7]

In 2015, Allan Loeb's long-developing script Out of This World, a project he had been writing since 2007, finally moved forward. Retitled The Space Between Us, the film was released in 2017. He sold his spec script, Collateral Beauty (2016), to Palm Star Media, with Will Smith cast in the lead.^[8][9]

Loeb was a compulsive gambler from the age of ten until he joined Gamblers Anonymous in 2005, claiming: "Literally the minute I quit gambling my writing changed. It was magical. I had been giving so much emotional energy to gambling that only half of myself was out there writing. Gambling was a time suck, an energy suck, a creativity suck. I started going to GA meetings every Thursday night, and the writing flourished. It had so much more energy and passion."^[4] He lost up to $30,000 to his gambling addiction in a single weekend and he was eventually left with $150,000 in credit-card debt.^[4] Loeb is a keen follower of rock band Grateful Dead, which he compares to the film industry in its fanbase.^[2]

• Allan Loeb at IMDb