Engineering Success in Hollywood: Courtney D. Armstrong
In an industry where self-promotion is paramount, Hollywood executive Courtney Armstrong ’93, ’97 JD, MBA prefers to operate behind the scenes.
This Warner Bros. Pictures deal-maker stays out of the spotlight. He is a hardworking, humble Chicagoan who loves his family, John Coltrane and Northwestern, the place that helped him engineer his formula for success.
As a child growing up on Chicago’s South Side, Armstrong spent many Saturdays in a movie theater, watching kung fu films with his older brothers. Although he loved television and movies, he says he never imagined working in the entertainment industry.
Now, as the executive vice president of worldwide business affairs for Warner Bros. Pictures, Armstrong leads a team that negotiates key deals with directors, producers, writers and actors. He has touched some of the most lucrative, influential movies of the past decade, including The Dark Knight, The Departed, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald and Man of Steel.
While at Northwestern, however, Armstrong never took a film class. He was focused on becoming a mechanical engineer.
“The study of systems, specifically how engines work, was of great interest to me,” Armstrong says. “The way you have to problem-solve and analyze issues in engineering is something I use today.”
After graduation, Armstrong enrolled at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, where he had planned to study patent law but instead decided to broaden his skill set. Armstrong completed the Kellogg School of Management’s JD-MBA program and accepted a job on the entertainment litigation team at Paul Hastings LLP, an international law firm headquartered in Los Angeles.
“Northwestern is a place where I was able to dream and then build on that dream,” Armstrong says.
Over the past two decades, Armstrong has used the skills he acquired at Northwestern to build strong connections and achieve great success in the motion picture industry. “He’s always determined to learn, always determined to grow, with a great thirst for knowledge,” says Steven Spira, president of worldwide business affairs for Warner Bros. Pictures. “He brings honor to the profession by doing his job in a highly thoughtful and intelligent manner and with impeccable integrity.”
In 2016 Armstrong was invited to become a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the exclusive organization that selects Oscar winners and has sought to diversify its membership. “There have been a lot of changes in the academy over the last couple years,” Armstrong says. “I’m proud to be a part of the change.”
Despite his full slate, Armstrong, an executive committee member of the Pritzker Law Board, remains dedicated to the University that provided his educational foundation, and his volunteer commitments run longer than some movie credits. “The real appreciation comes once you graduate — once you look back at your experiences and at the lifelong friends you made,” Armstrong says.
While Armstrong shies away from the limelight, he continues to thrive in Hollywood by leaving his ego at the door and formulating effective negotiation strategies. “My contribution to our movie slate,” he says, “is putting the deals in place and getting out of the way.”
See Northwestern Alumni Medal highlights.
Lindsay Beller and Kari Forsee ’02 are writers in the Alumni Relations and Development office at Northwestern.
Reader Responses
No one has commented on this page yet.
Submit a Response