Todd Edwards

Born Edwards and his older brother were raised in Columbus, OH. The two brothers shared a deep love of movies and animation, making their own films on Super 8 film. Undaunted by the challenges of the medium, they filmed their own sci-fi and fantasy "epics," with titles like "The Adventures of Captain Lightning."With his older brother blazing the trail by taking a video production job in Tulsa, OK and forging a creative on-set relationship with fellow Midwesterner Leech, Edwards rushed to join him in a move to Los Angeles a few years later.In L.A., the aspiring filmmakers took a variety of jobs to pay the bills, from editing game shows to working retail. Edwards dabbled in music. Eventually they teamed up to make a live-action film entitled "Chillicothe" in 1999. The film, about a group of men transitioning from college life to adult life, earned a prestigious spot at the Sundance Film Festival. It also caught the eye of a San Francisco investor, Maurice Kanbar, who enjoyed the film enough to stay in touch with the filmmakers and later, agree to finance an animated fairy tale told in a contemporary style.After much back-and-forth discussion, the creative partners eventually settled on the idea of retelling the story of "Little Red Riding Hood" from the different points in the course of a police investigation. Relying on his music background, Edwards wrote songs and composed music for the film.Upon the its completion, Kanbar was not in the financial position to distribute "Hoodwinked," so a copy was sent to Bob and Harvey Weinstein, who were in the process of leaving Miramax and Disney and setting up their own company. The Weinsteins used their creative clout to wrangle high-level voice talent for the film, namely, Anne Hathaway, Glenn Close and Chazz Palminteri. Thanks in part to its relatively low $20 million budget, the film earned enough money back to warrant a sequel, with Edwards and the rest of the team in charge. In the meantime, Edwards and his brother provided voice-over work for the 2006 animated film, "Over the Hedge" while also developing additional live action projects.