Jason Bateman’s Aggregate Extends Universal Deal Through 2017

EXCLUSIVE: Jason Bateman’s Aggregate label has been extended another two years at Universal Pictures. Bateman has had a first-look deal there since 2012 and in that time has grown into the role as producer as well as the director of Bad Words and then the Toronto Film Festival-bound The Family Fang. His new deal runs through 2017, and he has hired as an executive Aaron Schmidt, who had been a VP at Kevin McCormick’s Warner Bros-based Langley Park.

Aggregate produced the hit Universal comedy Identity Thief alongside Bluegrass Films, with Bateman and Melissa McCarthy, starring as well as Bad Words, which Focus Features acquired after the 2013 Toronto Film Festival. Aggregate’s latest producing property is The Family Fang, in which Bateman stars with Nicole Kidman and Christopher Walken. Aggregate is also producing Fox Searchlight’s IPO Man, the David Bar Katz-scripted Universal comedy FBI Wedding and other upcoming projects include The Disappeared and Game Night. The latter is for New Line, where Bateman starred in Horrible Bosses.

As for Schmidt, he has shepherded Jason Hall’s Rasputin at Warner Bros with Appian Way, Boston Strangler at Warner Bros with Casey Affleck, Tamasy & Johnson’s Accomplice at Fox with Red Hour, New Line’s Art Of The Steal, White Smoke at Lionsgate with Blumhouse and Once Upon A Time In Beverly Hills for HBO Films. Schmidt started his career in the motion picture lit department at WME.