Columbia Pictures creative executive Foster Driver is leaving his position at the studio to become a creative executive at Disney, TheWrap has learned.
Driver is considered a bright young executive with strong relationships around town. He’ll finish out the week at Sony and take some time off before he starts his new CE job at Disney at the end of the month.
He joins Disney’s live-action team spearheaded by production president Sean Bailey.
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At Sony, Driver worked closely with Sam Dickerman, who currently serves as executive VP of production at Disney. However, it was actually another Disney executive who thought Driver would be a good fit at the family-friendly Burbank studio. Dickerman didn’t know Driver was angling for the open position at Disney until well into the interview process.
After graduating from Pepperdine University, Driver started his career working as an assistant to motion picture literary agent Scott Agostoni at the William Morris Agency, and later WME. He then took a job at Warner Bros., where he worked as Niija Kuykendall’s assistant before graduating to Jeff Robinov‘s desk.
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Serving as Robinov’s assistant for more than a year is a demanding job but it has its perks, and it wasn’t long before Driver was hired as a CE at Sony. His exit from Sony was amicable — the Disney job just proved too hard to turn down.