Andrew Gunn Dead: Disney Producer was 56

Andrew Gunn, who produced a string of Disney comedies in the early 2000s, among them the Lindsay Lohan-starring Freaky Friday and superhero movie Sky High, has died. He was 58.

Gunn, who had been diagnosed in 2024 with ALS, the neurological degenerative disorder also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, passed away in his home in Toronto, his family announced Monday.

As a producer with an exclusive first look-deal with Disney in the era when it was run by chairman Dick Cook and motion pictures president Nina Jacobson, Gunn prolifically produced an enviable list of big budget studio comedies, ranging from remakes, originals and movies based on Disneyland rides, the latter a popular source of inspiration at the time.

Freaky Friday got made after Gunn pitched the idea to then studio head Jacobson, who was initially worried about taking on a theatrical remake after a previous remake aired on ABC several years earlier. Once the go-head was given, Annette Bening, Michelle Trachtenberg and Tom Selleck were cast but that configuration fell apart when Trachtenberg wasn’t let out of her work schedule for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The studio and Gunn scrambled to find leads, casting Jamie Lee Curtis and then landing on Lindsay Lohan, whose initial audition didn’t wow but who rose to the top over actresses such as Kristen Stewart, Kristen Bell, Brie Larson, and Shiri Appleby, thanks to a chemistry read.  

“We made movies with genuine creative exuberance at that time and Andrew never had any shortage of that,” recalled Jacobson. “On Freaky Friday, we were able to make a decision on a creative instinct and not by asking an algorithm on who to cast.”

The movie became a commercial hit and earned Curtis a Golden Globe nomination in the best actress (musical or comedy) category. Gunn reteamed with Curtis and Lohan for the well-regarded sequel Freakier Friday that was released last year.

The movie was a point of pride for the producer as he also worked with Kristin Burr, formerly a Disney executive who oversaw many of Gunn’s movies during his early 2000s time at the studio, and Anne-Marie Sanderlin, who was his partner at Gunn Films at that time. It was a return to his professional family of sorts.

On a more personal level, however, he was proud to work on the sequel with his actual family, his two adult children, Isabelle and Connor Gunn.

“The best part was my daughter worked in the camera department and got into the (cinematographers) union and my son worked in props. So I got to see them every day,” he wrote The Hollywood Reporter via text in 2025. “I can’t express what that meant to me.”

Gunn was born in Toronto in 1967. After first graduating of University of Western in Canada, he then moved to Los Angeles to earn a Masters in Communication Management from The Annenberg School at USC. From there, he jumped into the entertainment industry. One of his first jobs was for producer David Permut, who was working on movies such as Face/Off at the time.

In the late ’90s, he ran development at Great Oaks Entertainment, the production company run by John Hughes. The banner made several Disney hits, among them 101 Dalmatians and 102 Dalmatians as well as a remake of Flubber that starred Robin Williams. Gunn also worked on Home Alone 3 and for producer Ricardo Mestres before launching his shingle Gunn Films in 2001.

“John Hughes told me that if you have earned it with comedy and real believable characters, it takes very little, Planes Trains & Automobiles being an example, to surprise the audience with tears they did not expect,” Gunn wrote of his time with the writer-producer who was famous for his teen movies and sentimental family movies.

Jacobson recalled taking a bet on Gunn by going with her gut. “He was incredibly driven, incredibly committed and incredibly dogged. He brought a hope and an optimism and attentiveness. I trusted him,” she said. In Gunn, she found an independent producer who, in her eyes, could also be one of the executive class. It led to a prodigious period for the producer and studio president.

In that first decade of the 2000s, Gunn produced The Country Bears and the 2003 Eddie Murphy-starring The Haunted Mansion, both of which were based on popular park attractions; original movies College Road Trip with Martin Lawrence and Raven Symone, the Adam Sandler fantasy Bedtime Stories, and superhero tale Sky High; and Race to Witch Mountain, a Dwayne Johnson-starring update of the 1975 adventure movie Escape to Witch Mountain.

One project Gunn developed for years was Order of the Seven, which was originally conceived as a retelling of Snow White in a martial arts setting but morphed into an Asia-set adventure story. Saoirse Ronan was set to set to and commercials director and visual effect animator Michael Gracey was to have made his feature directing debut on the project. However, just mere months before going into production, it was shut down by then studio president Sean Bailey in spring of 2012.

Although the project never reconstituted, Gunn and Gracey, who years later go on to make his debut with The Greatest Showman, developed a tight bond that lasted years.

“You believed in me before any other producer,” Gracey wrote to Gunn in early 2025 after the filmmaker heard he was diagnosed with ALS. “You saw something in me, supported it and fought by my side to get our film as far as we did. For me, you are the one and only example of a producer that truly backs their director, and it’s an experience I haven’t had since,” he wrote in a letter shared with THR.

Gracey called their shelved project the benchmark for the kinds of experiences he hoped to foster both personally and professionally.

“For those reasons, that film will never be a failure. We may not have succeeded in realising it, but you influenced my expectations in a way I cannot overstate,” he wrote in the letter.

Gunn had sights beyond just straight up producing movies but additionally had an eye on developing and pushing next generation talent and even executive ranks. Not only did he consistently fill his movies with rising actors but in 2001, he established the Disney Writers Program where he selected and worked with five unproduced screenwriters annually. Among the writers who saw their careers launched were David Berenbaum (Elf, Haunted Mansion), Matt Lopez (2022’s Father of the Bride), and David DiGilio, who co-created The Terminal List.   

He also hired and mentored as his assistants and executives a class of hungry go-getters that would later grow to become industry leaders, among them former Disney and Netflix executive Tendo Nagenda and Lionsgate’s current president of motion picture group Erin Westerman.

Calling him a born storyteller, Westerman told THR Gunn made movies where kids and families are taken seriously. And despite his rugged, bulldog looks, predilection to wearing leather and affinity for tattoos, she recalled him being the “softest, gooiest man on the inside,” a sentiment shared by many.

“No one sent better flowers,” Westerman added. “He prided himself on that. Even when I was his assistant, he would order them himself to ensure they were perfect.”

Gunn is survived by his children, his wife Jane Bellamy Gunn, mother Anne Gunn, and siblings Hilary Knight, Graeme Gunn and Cameron Gunn. He was predeceased by his father, Charles Gunn.