Born and raised in the small New England town of Holliston, Massachusetts, Adam Green’s journey into filmmaking began at the age of 8. Having already been exposed to all kinds of horror movies by his older brother, Adam’s developing cinematic imagination got him into trouble at camp that summer when the councilors warned the children to stay away from their cabin or else “hatchet face” would get them. Young Green found their lack of details in the warning disappointing, so that night he made up his own elaborate ghost story about a deformed man named “Victor Crowley” who wound up being accidentally killed by his own father with a hatchet…and who still haunts the surrounding woods. His story wound up scaring the rest of the kids in his cabin and when they started crying, the camp threatened to send Adam home. That same summer, Adam saw Steven Spielberg’s E.T. and declared that someday he was going to move to Hollywood, make movies, and meet E.T.
Throughout elementary and high school, Green found himself playing leading roles in the school plays, forming and fronting his own rock band “Vigilante”, conducting his own morning radio show “Coffee & Donuts”, and hosting his own cable access TV show. At age 16, Green took part in a communications class where students were taught basic shooting and editing through making their own music videos, the first thing that Green would ever direct. While the majority of the class chose light songs and made cute videos of their friends…Green’s 9-minute opus for Metallica’s “Master Of Puppets” included a student overdosing on drugs and tearing the skin off of his own arms in a horrific hallucination. The video went on to become a communications class ‘favorite’ for years to come.
In 1997 Green graduated from New York’s Hofstra University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Television and Film production and landed a job making local TV commercials back home in Boston. It was during this time that he founded and fronted the metal band “Haddonfield” which saw two successful years of performing in the Boston area, most notably their own coveted weekly slot in Salem.
In the meantime, Green began "borrowing" the equipment from the cable advertising company he worked at to make his own films after hours. His first short film COLUMBUS DAY WEEKEND (where Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers mistakenly stalk the same campsite and then fall in love with each other) wound up gaining the attention of a few people in Hollywood who gave Green the encouragement to attempt a feature-length production.
After C&D won “Best Picture” at a film festival and found a cult following through bootlegging and tape trading, Green felt that he was ready to try and make it in Hollywood. He packed his bags and made the journey out West.
The next three years saw struggle and disappointment as Green waited for something to happen with C&D. While continuing to write screenplays and make short films, he took various assistant jobs within the industry as well as any other odd job he could do to stay alive. Most notably, Green worked as a DJ at the world famous Rainbow Bar & Grill, a notorious rock and roll club on the Sunset Strip. While working at the Rainbow, Green started a monthly stand-up comedy night with other struggling comics/writers that he was friendly with, including Andy Samberg (now of SNL fame) and comedy duo Chris Romano and Eric Falconer (now writers for the Sarah Silverman Program).
Just when it seemed like nothing was going to pan out, COFFEE & DONUTS was bought by Walt Disney Studios/Touchstone TV to be re-developed as a sit-com for UPN with Green writing the pilot. Though this was a monumental success for Green, the pilot for C&D was never shot and ultimately UPN and the WB merged together to form the CW Network…leaving all previous development efforts in the dust.
Green continued to make a living developing, writing, and working on various network television pilots and feature films…however, none of the projects would ever make it to a public release. It was during this tumultuous time, however, that Green wrote the slasher movie HATCHET, based on the story of “Victor Crowley” that he had created back at summer camp when he was 8. Unfortunately, Green’s script came out during a low period for the genre when Hollywood was focusing only on remakes, sequels, and PG-13 horror-lite. Everyone passed on the project.
Determined to see Victor Crowley make it to the big screen, Green put the film together independently with the help of his friends and directed HATCHET in the summer of 2005. Despite Hollywood’s initial disbelief in the project and countless post-production set backs, HATCHET premiered to rave reviews and sold-out screaming crowds at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival and was noted as one of the festival’s biggest hits by Variety, The NY Times, and The LA Times.
{Original HATCHET film festival poster.}
HATCHET wound up being selected for countless festivals worldwide and winning a multitude of awards including the Audience Choice Award for “Best Picture” in 3 different countries and placement in both MTV and Ain’t It Cool News’ TOP 10 FILMS OF THE YEAR lists. Critically hailed as “the greatest slasher film in 20 years”, “the holy grail of slasher films”, and creating “the next icon of horror”- HATCHET saw a successful national theatrical release in 2007 and went on to become the best selling DVD that it’s distributor (Anchor Bay) has ever had.
While HATCHET was still in post-production, Green completed the art-house psychodrama SPIRAL (co-directed by Green’s friend and star of HATCHET, Joel David Moore), which hit the festival circuit before HATCHET had even been released. 
A 180-degree turn from HATCHET in every way, SPIRAL took home the prestigious “Gold Vision Award” at the 2007 Santa Barbara International Film Festival, the Silver Award at Austin’s Fantastic Film Festival, and was compared to the work of Alfred Hitchcock in countless reviews. In February of 2008, SPIRAL saw a limited U.S. theatrical run followed by its DVD release.
During the worldwide promotional tours for HATCHET and SPIRAL Green also wrote the MTV / American Eagle short film series IT’S A MALL WORLD and wrote/directed the claymation internet series WINTER TALES. Green is currently producing the horror movie GRACE and is in pre-production to direct his romantic comedy GOD ONLY KNOWS. He is also in talks to helm a sequel to his 2007 hit HATCHET but has not publicly committed to any specific involvement with the project just yet.
Adam Green lives in Hollywood California where he continues to work as a filmmaker, though he has not met E.T.…Yet.
“Remember, at the end of the day we’re not curing cancer. We’re just making life more
entertaining before we get cancer.” – Adam Green, VARIETY 2007
Using friends as cast and crew, three lights, and his severely troubled cat “W. Axl Rose”...Green’s comedy COFFEE & DONUTS (inspired by his High School radio days and the devastating break-up with his childhood girlfriend) was completed for a mere $400 in the summer of 1999. 