After two decades in the Hollywood trenches together, Chris Bender and J.C. Spink are splitting up and dissolving their management-production company BenderSpink, TheWrap has learned.
The duo have been considering a split for several months, though it is said to be amicable. Both Bender and Spink intend to start their own management-production companies.
It’s unclear whether BenderSpink executives Jake Weiner and Jake Wagner or rising star Scott Stoops will follow either Bender or Spink to their new companies.
After meeting at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, Bender and Spink came up together as assistants at Zide-Perry Productions. As the spec market took off in the late ’90s, they left in 1998 to form their own company, which was involved in the “Hangover” trilogy, David Cronenberg‘s acclaimed “A History of Violence” and New Line comedies such as “We’re the Millers” and “Vacation.”
Spink focused on the management side of the business, as he excelled at working with writers, which left Bender to focus on the company’s production slate.
Bender will next produce the Andrew Garfield–Dakota Johnson crime thriller “Under the Silver Lake,” which hails from “It Follows” director David Robert Mitchell.