Lawrence Kasanoff

Lawrence Kasanoff (also known as Larry Kasanoff, born June 1, 1959, in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American producer and filmmaker whose career has moved between studio genre fare and ambitious independent ventures. He is widely associated with building entertainment companies and shepherding franchise-driven projects for film and television.

In the mid-1980s he launched Lightning Pictures under Vestron, then went on to co-found Lightstorm Entertainment with James Cameron in 1990 before establishing Threshold Entertainment in 1993. As a producer, Kasanoff’s credits span cult and mainstream titles, including Blood Diner, Blue Steel, and True Lies, along with family-oriented animation such as Lego: The Adventures of Clutch Powers.

Kasanoff is best known for helping bring Mortal Kombat to the screen, producing the 1995 hit, its sequel Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, and related spin-offs like Defenders of the Realm and Conquest; he later served as an executive producer on the 2021 reboot. He also directed the notorious animated feature Foodfight!, where he contributed the voice of Cheasel T. Weasel, and appears in documentaries such as Insert Coin and Rotten: Behind the Foodfight.