Elie Samaha
American film producer
Elie Samaha (Arabic: إيلي سماحة) is a Lebanese-American film producer. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Franchise Pictures, and was also the co-founder and chairman of Luminosity Pictures.
Samaha built his reputation in Hollywood first as the owner of Celebrity Cleaners and then with his nightclub on Sunset Strip, the Roxbury. Parlaying the Hollywood friendships he formed through his clubs, Samaha was given a distribution deal with Warner Bros. Pictures in 1998.
Samaha has produced over 83 works since 1995, primarily films along with some video games. He produced The Boondock Saints (1999), Battlefield Earth (2000), Driven (2001), 3000 Miles to Graceland (2001), Heist (2001), The Pledge (2001), Spartan (2004), Back on the Strip (2023), among many others.
Career
Samaha was a co-owner/founder of the dry cleaner chain Celebrity Cleaners and co-owner of the Roxbury nightclub in Los Angeles.
Between 1997 and 2004, Samaha produced films under the Franchise Pictures studio title, which included films such as The Boondock Saints, Mercy, Battlefield Earth, The Whole Nine Yards, Get Carter, Angel Eyes and Driven.
Samaha specialized in rescuing stars' pet projects.
“Elie Samaha” enters the record as american film producer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Elie, Samaha and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q381545. VIAF identifies the subject as 51380407. The Library of Congress control number is no2003071644. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1998, 1995, 1999 and 2000.
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This entry incorporates text from “Elie Samaha” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.