Rob Letterman

Rob Letterman (born October 31, 1970, in Honolulu, Hawaii) is an American director and screenwriter known for blending fast-paced comedy with effects-driven spectacle across animation and live action. After studying at Mid-Pacific Institute and the University of Southern California, he began building momentum with the short film Los Gringos, which screened at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival.

Letterman broke into mainstream animation at DreamWorks, joining Shark Tale (2004) as a writer and later co-director—work that brought him an Annie Award nomination for feature writing. He continued shaping crowd-pleasing animated storytelling as co-director of Monsters vs. Aliens (2009), and is also credited with a voice role in the film as Secret Service Man #1 / Lieutenant.

He later pivoted to live-action filmmaking, directing Gulliver’s Travels (2010), the horror-comedy Goosebumps (2015), and Pokémon Detective Pikachu (2019). The latter became a major box-office success, earning $433 million worldwide and standing out for its strong critical reception among video game adaptations at the time.

In 2020, Netflix announced Letterman as director for a live-action/animated adaptation of Ubisoft’s Beyond Good & Evil, though the project has seen no major public updates since. He is in a relationship with Beth Pontrelli and has two children, Jack and Eva.