‘Paper Towns’ Producers on Keeping Up With ‘Twilight’ Stars and Making John Green Cry
by Rebecca Ford
Wyck Godfrey (left) and Marty Bowen / Hussein Katz
Temple Hill’s Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey went from Hollywood roommates to kings of YA movies after producing the ‘Twilight’ series. Now, as they follow ‘The Fault in Our Stars,’ they explain how they discover unknown actors and how much power they give authors.
Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey were 27-year-old acquaintances climbing the Hollywood ladder when they moved into a house together on Temple Hill Drive in Beachwood Canyon. Perhaps because they met during their formative years, the roommates turned best friends have kept their production company young at heart, with a focus on low- to midbudget films aimed at teens, young adults and women (the occasional Nerf war in the hall helps).
Bowen, a former UTA partner, and Godfrey, a veteran producer, founded Temple Hill in 2006 and hit paydirt with the Twilight franchise, producing five films in three years that went on to earn a collective $3.34 billion worldwide. They found YA gold again in 2014 by adapting John Green‘s book The Fault in Our Stars into a $12 million Fox film that earned $307.2 million. Bowen and Godfrey, both 47, moved quickly to adapt Green’s Paper Towns (out July 24) and next will take on the author’s debut novel, Looking for Alaska, at Paramount. In the process, they have made stars of such unproven talents as Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, Shailene Woodley and, they now hope, Cara Delevingne and Nat Wolff of Towns.
With books-to-film as its backbone, the 10-employee Temple Hill has juggled multiple projects at once, producing Nicholas Sparks adaptations (Dear John and The Longest Ride) and the Maze Runner franchise (the second installment, The Scorch Trials, is set to open Sept. 18) while also working in TV on the upcoming Fox series Rosewood. The duo also signed to produce a Power Rangers reboot and James Frey‘s Endgame. And they’re expanding into publishing, teaming with HarperCollins to develop emerging authors. Bowen, a married father of 3-year-old twins and a newborn, and Godfrey, a married dad of three teen boys, sat down with THR to discuss Green’s allure, how they find stars and female voices in Hollywood.