Miranda Bailey co-founded Ambush Entertainment with the philosophy of producing a wide variety of feature films, from adventures and romances to comedies and prestige dramas.
Bailey’s first foray into film production was as an executive producer with Jun Tan on This Space Between Us, starring Jeremy Sisto and Poppy Montgomery. The film was screened at numerous festivals including its premiere at the 25th Seattle International Film Festival. In 2000 the film won the Moxie Award for Best Comedy at the Santa Monica Film Festival.
Bailey began her entertainment career as an actress in New York theater. A graduate of Skidmore College, she has appeared in a number of theatrical productions including Borrego, written by Robert Glaudini; The Seagull directed by the head of the Romanian Theatre in Bucarest, Sanda Manu; and The Marathon Years directed by award-winning director Anne Bogart. Some of her television and film credits include a series lead role in the half hour pilot Living Space; a guest role on FOX’s Beyond Belief and the NBC mini-series The Sixties.
Since forming Ambush, she has produced the critically-acclaimed horror/comedy Dead and Breakfast, a film that Ain’t-It-Cool News praised as “… the US answer to Shaun of the Dead.” In addition, the she produced the comedy The Oh in Ohio, starring Parker Posey, Paul Rudd, Mischa Barton and Danny DeVito; and executive produced the drama The Squid and the Whale, which received both the Director’s Award and the prestigious Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The film stars Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney. She has recently co-starred with Leonor Varela and Jeffrey Donovan in the thriller Hindsight and produced the sci-fi horror Unearthed that recently premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Matthew Leutwyler studied film at The San Francisco Art Institute. He was trained by Discreet Logic in Montreal as a digital artist on the Flame workstation and later became a partner in the San Francisco based web design company Graphical Planet.
Matthew’s first feature film, the black comedy Road Kill, was produced on a $180,000 budget. The Daily Variety called Road Kill “A breezy entertaining ride... A jaunty trip with a good balance of dark comedy and legitimate drama.” The San Francisco Metropolitan called it “Clever” and the London newspaper, The Mirror, called it “A Four Star Classic!” Road Kill premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival where it won the Audience Choice Award for best feature film.
As his follow-up, Leutwyler wrote, directed and edited the more personal romantic comedy This Space Between Us. The film’s ensemble cast included Jeremy Sisto, Poppy Montgomery, Alex Kingston, Vanessa Marcil, Taylor Negron, Erik Palladino and Garry Marshall. TSBU made its premiere at the Seattle International Film Festival where The Daily Variety wrote: “Moving gracefully from comedy to drama and back again, This Space Between Us has a sexy, freewheeling spirit... Pathos and Hollywood satire mix surprisingly well, with Space taking on more shape and meaning as it goes along.”
Leaving The Bay Area and moving to Los Angeles, Leutwyler co-founded the production company Ambush Entertainment. His first film for the company was the award winning comedy-horror-musical Dead & Breakfast starring Jeremy Sisto, David Carradine, Erik Palladino, Portia DiRossi, and Ever Carradine. In the company’s first four years the team has produced four films including Dead & Breakfast, The Academy Award nominated drama The Squid & The Whale, the sexually charged comedy The Oh In Ohio starring Parker Posey, Paul Rudd, and Danny DeVito, and Leutwyler’s latest film, Unearthed which recently made its debut at the Tribeca Film Festival and will be released theatrically by After Dark Films.
Leutwyler is repped by Chris Mills at Magnet Management, and attorney David Fox at Myman, Abell, Fineman, Greenspan & Light.
After graduating with a bachelor's degree in psychology, Amanda moved to Los Angeles and began working in the field of education. She made the switch from education to entertainment in 2003 with an internship at Ambush. She has since co-produced several spec commercials, as well as produced the short film OCD, which premiered at the 2005 Boston Film Festival. She is currently Associate Producer on Ambush's upcoming project HINDSIGHT.
Jun Tan was a founding partner / CFO of the San Francisco based web design and development company, Graphical Planet, Inc. The company employed a staff of 22 graphic designers, software engineers and developers, and a sales team.
Jun met Matthew Leutwyler in 1997 and began working on the post-production of Road Kill. He next teamed up with Leutwyler as a producer on This Space Between Us. Jun later became a founding partner of Ambush Entertainment where he produced the award winning horror / comedy Dead & Breakfast and executive produced the comedy The Oh In Ohio starring Paul Rudd and Parker Posey. Most recently he produced the horror sci-fi film Unearthed which will be distributed by After Dark Films / Lionsgate. Jun also used his graphic arts background to provide storyboards for many of the films that Ambush produced.
Jun now splits his time developing and producing films with Ambush and the newly formed Target: Earth Pictures with producer E.J. Heiser. Currently, he and producer Kristi Denton Cohen are developing the coming of age drama The River Why, based on the best selling novel by David James Duncan. Additionally Jun has written the story for Silk Road, a Chinese language action / drama to be directed by acclaimed filmmaker Woo Ping that he will also produce with Target Earth partner E.J Heiser.