Michael Berk

Michael Berk is a prolific American writer, producer and director with over three hundred hours of produced television to his credit. Among his accomplishments are writing and producing the first three-hour movie ever made for television, "The Incredible Journey of Dr. Meg Laurel", the highest rated MOW of the year building to a 52 share over three hours, "The Ordeal of Dr Mudd" another three-hour movie that received two Emmy Awards,"The Haunting Passion" starring Jane Seymour, winner of the Venice Film Festival Award, "Crime of Innocence" starring Andy Griffith, and "The Last Song", for which Berk was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Mystery Writing.

In 2011, Berk co-wrote the feature film "Soul Surfer", which received an A+ Cinema Score and became the highest grossing live-action surfing film of all time, and won numerous awards including the Movie Guide Award for Most Inspirational Motion Picture.

After writing and producing a dozen highly successful and critically acclaimed MOW's for all the major networks, Michael and his partner Douglas Schwartz, were recruited by 20th Century Fox Television to create new television series for the studio. Their first series was Manimal, followed by The Wizard (TV series), for CBS. The warm and moving prime time series was heralded by critics and fans and received numerous awards. Berk and Schwartz were the first dramatic writers Grant Tinker signed to an overall deal at his newly formed GTG Studios. Based on a story by Berk, Schwartz and Bonann, Michael wrote the original two-hour Baywatch Pilot, "Panic at Malibu Pier", for NBC. The ratings were so high Brandon Tartikoff picked the show up for series. Baywatch ran for one season on NBC before the demise of GTG forced its cancellation. But Michael and Doug wouldn't let the series die. They brought David Hasselhoff and Bonann back on board and spent the next fourteen months redeveloping Baywatch for first run syndication, a market that didn't exist at the time. They trimmed the budget from $1,250,000 to $830,000 per episode while remaining a full union show in Los Angeles shooting in 35mm. The rest, as they say, is history. Baywatch went on to exceed a weekly global audience of over 1 billion people, earning it the Guinness Book of World Records' title as the most watched television series in history.

While an active showrunner on Baywatch, Michael Berk continued to create and produce new series and TV movies including "Thunder in Paradise", "[[Baywatch Nights]]”, "Daytona Beach" for Disney/ABC, "Bright Light City" for MGM/NBC, and three large-scale television movies with Doug Schwartz, "Steel Chariots" for the FOX Network, "Assault on Devil's Island" for TNT, and its sequel, "Assault on Death Mountain". In 2003 Berk wrote and Schwartz directed the Baywatch reunion movie for Fox entitled, "Baywatch: Hawaiian Wedding".

In 1998, Michael Berk co-created the International Film Festival [[CineVegas]] at the famed Paris Hotel in Las Vegas. CineVegas ran for over ten years at the Palms Hotel. Michael is also founding partner in Players Network, the first gaming lifestyle VOD television network that is currently available in over 20,000,000 homes on Comcast, the largest cable company in the world.

Michael is currently producing the major theatrical feature “Baywatch The Movie” for Paramount / Montecito. The movie is scheduled to go into production at the end of 2013 for a summer 2014 release.

Michael is also producing the feature film "Killing Hasselhoff" scheduled for production in fall, 2013.

Michael’s movies and series have won Emmy Awards, Golden Globe Nominations, The Edgar Allan Poe Award, the Christopher Award, the Red Cross Spirit Award, the Ark Trust Award, Heal The Bay environmental award.

He has continued expanding his creative endeavors to include New Media, Branding, Marketing and corporate consulting.