Photo: Gage Skidmore / CC BY-SA 3.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Liebesman is one of those directors I file under 'studio firefighter' more than auteur. Born in Johannesburg and trained at NYU's Tisch, he built a career on big, loud genre swings: horror with Darkness Falls and the Texas Chainsaw prequel, then the alien-invasion grind of Battle: Los Angeles and the CGI spectacle of Wrath of the Titans and the 2014 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I respect that he kept landing massive assignments, but his filmography reads to me like a survey of 2000s-2010s blockbuster appetites rather than a personal vision. A capable hand for chaos, if not the soul of it.
Overview
Jonathan Liebesman (born 15 September 1976) is a South African film director and screenwriter. He is known for directing the films Darkness Falls (2003), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006), Battle: Los Angeles (2011), Wrath of the Titans (2012), and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014).
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Jonathan Liebesman
- Name (Japanese)
- ジョナサン・リーベスマン
- Reading
- じょなさん・りーべすまん
- Born
- September 15, 1976 (age 49)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Virgo / Dragon
- Origin
- Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- film director / screenwriter / film producer / television director / director
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Private
- University
- New York University Tisch School of the Arts
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
Film director — see all → · Screenwriter — see all → · More people from South Africa →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.