William Pohlad

William Pohlad is president of River Road Entertainment, an integrated entertainment company active in independent film production. River Road, which maintains offices in Minneapolis and Los Angeles, was founded by Mr. Pohlad in 1987. After founding the company, he wrote, directed, and co-produced his first feature film, Old Explorers (which starred José Ferrer and James Whitmore). He followed that up with numerous commercial, corporate, and documentary film and video projects. His documentary credits include profiles of rock star Prince, Hall of Fame baseball player Kirby Puckett, and Irish theatre director Joe Dowling. He has also created music videos and in-store programming for Musicland/Sam Goody, and has partnered with Musicland to produce music programming for cable and syndicated television. The company continues developing and producing creative television programming through its River Road Productions subsidiary. The company also owns Hi-Wire, a state-of-the-art post-production facility with full digital, HDTV, film and video editorial, film transfer, 3-D animation, motion graphics, and music and sound design capabilities. Clients include major national advertising agencies, working with such brands as Best Buy, BMW, LL Bean, Target Stores, and Northwest Airlines. In 2003, River Road closed a co-financing deal with Focus Features. The resulting features are distributed domestically by Focus, which handles international sales on some of the titles as well. With River Road partner Laura Bickford, Mr. Pohlad's next projects as producer are Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, to be directed by Steven Shainberg and adapted by Erin Cressida Wilson from a biography by Patricia Bosworth, and to star Academy Award winner Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey, Jr.; Brett Morgen's political documentary C7; and Che, which will reteam two Academy Award winners, director Steven Soderbergh and actor Benicio Del Toro. The latter will star as the legendary Ernesto "Che" Guevara de la Serna.