Personal details
- Birth Date: 1987-07-25
- Height: 6′ 1″ (1.85 m)
- Professions: Producer, Second Unit Director or Assistant Director, Production Manager
Matthew Helderman is basically that guy in Hollywood who’s everywhere, but you don’t always know his name—like the wizard behind the curtain pulling all the strings. He kicked off Buffalo 8 back in 2010 while juggling college life at Lake Forest, which already screams overachiever. Fast forward a bit, and his company’s dropping films at Sundance, SXSW, Berlin—no big deal—and even snagging a Netflix original with Spike Lee. Oh, and if you binged “Conversations With a Killer: Jeffrey Dahmer,” yeah, his crew handled that too. By 2013, Helderman co-founded BondIt Media Capital and started throwing around some serious cash—think $250 million, spread over 400+ film and TV projects. He hustled $30 million in equity and debt, sold part of the company off to Accord Financial, and managed to score a $75 million credit facility with a Texas hedge fund, which is just... wild. The slate? Everything from Oscar-nominated “Loving Vincent” to “Midway” (that huge war flick), plus “The Peanut Butter Falcon” and movies with basically every A-lister you can think of—De Niro, Willis, Travolta, Uma, Cage, Arnie... the list goes on. Box office? Over $500 million total. Not too shabby. Helderman’s not just about movies, though—he helped buy out ABS Payroll, ran it, then sold it to Vensure, the biggest PEO in the U.S. Oh, and he’s done TED Talks, got a New York Times feature, and somehow found time to get a philosophy degree. No rest for the ambitious, apparently.
Nerd alert: I actually wrote two undergrad theses—yeah, two, because apparently I hate free time. First up, Wes Anderson. You know, the king of pastel color palettes and perfectly awkward dialogue? I got way too into dissecting his quirky characters, symmetry obsessions, and how he somehow makes every dysfunctional family seem oddly lovable. Then there’s Woody Allen. Honestly, that was a wild ride—neurotic humor, jazz soundtracks, and New York basically acting as a character in half his films. I dove into his existential crises, the whole “life is meaningless, but let’s crack a joke anyway” thing, and how his movies blur the line between fantasy and reality. Both directors are completely different flavors of weird, but man, they know how to mess with your head. Tons of late-night coffee, existential dread, and way too many film rewatches went into those papers, but hey, I survived.
July 25, 1987
6′ 1″ (1.85 m)
Konidela Ram Charan
37 years old