Michael V Lewis

Lewis is the co-founder, chief executive and chairman of RealD, a company that makes 3D projection systems and glasses for movie theaters. Having launched in 2005 with the Disney film Chicken Little, which showed in RealD on a mere 100 screens, RealD technology is now used on nearly 14,000 screens in North America, representing 91% of the 3D market, and 28,000 screens around the world, or about 36% of the market. When you break it down by box-office numbers, RealD accounts for well over 50% of 3D movies worldwide. Lewis attended the University of Florida, where he majored in political science. His first, modest venture involved buying arcade games and sticking them in fraternity houses, giving the fraternities a percentage of the income generated in exchange for allowing the games to be installed. A finance internship in New York brought him in contact with people in the media industry, and in 1986 he made the jump to Hollywood, working as a movie production assistant before moving gradually into investment banking, consulting and film financing. He co-founded RealD in 2003 with Joshua Greer, who ran a film production company that had financed James Cameron’s IMAX 3D documentary Ghosts of the Abyss. In 2009, James Cameron’s Avatar proved what an epic viewing experience the technology could provide—and became the highest-grossing film of all time. RealD went public the following year. In November 2015, RealD announced that it would be sold to Rizvi Traverse Management for $551 million in cash. Lewis stayed on as CEO.