Here’s what Taiki Waititi has been doing in the shadows: preparing to receive a career honor from the Producers Guild.
The PGA today set the Oscar winner for its 2025 Norman Lear Achievement Award, which recognizes a producer or producing team for their extraordinary body of work in television. He’ll pick up the prize during the 36th annual Producers Guild Awards on February 8 at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles.
“Taika Waititi has profoundly transformed the television landscape with his imaginative work as a producer, bringing to life groundbreaking series What We Do in the Shadows, Our Flag Means Death and Reservation Dogs,” Producers Guild of America Presidents Stephanie Allain and Donald De Line said in a joint statement. “His remarkable ability to explore cultures through a lens of humor and humanity makes these narratives not only relatable but also deeply engaging for audiences.”
Piki Films co-founder Waititi has produced innovative and distinctive stories and done groundbreaking work including the multiple-award-winning Indigenous teen comedy Reservation Dogs. His TV credits also include the Max comedy Our Flag Means Death, which ended this year, and acclaimed TV adaptation of What We Do in the Shadows, which wrapped its six-season run this week after scoring a third Emmy nom for Outstanding Comedy Series.
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Most recently, he launched the Apple TV+ series Time Bandits, a creative reimagining of Monty Python alum Terry Gilliam’s 1981 film, which he co-created and serve as an executive producer. Other recent projects include Hulu’s Interior Chinatown, for which he directed the pilot and is an executive producer, and the film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun.
A five-time Emmy nominee Waititi also won an Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Jojo Rabbit, which also was up for Best Picture. He also scored an Oscar nom for his 2004 live-action short Two Cars, One Night.
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“Thank you so much to the Producers Guild of America for this incredible honor,” Waititi said. “To be included alongside legends and so many I look up to, like the great Norman Lear himself, is truly humbling. My work as a producer has always been about telling stories that reflect the world as it is — messy, diverse and full of humanity. I’m lucky to work with an amazing team of people who help bring these stories to life, and I’m grateful to be able to give a voice to storytellers that deserve to be heard. This award is for all of us; thank you for recognizing the importance of storytelling that connects us.”
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