Daniel Goldberg, the frequent Ivan Reitman and Todd Phillips collaborator who co-wrote and produced the Bill Murray starrers Stripes and Meatballs and shepherded other films including Space Jam, Old School, Road Trip and the Hangover trilogy, has died. He was 74.
Goldberg died Wednesday in Los Angeles, his brother, Deuce Bigalow screenwriter Harris Goldberg, told The Hollywood Reporter. “He was a gentle, lovely guy, he was my hero,” Harris said. “He was everything I measured myself against.”
No cause of death was immediately available.
Survivors also include his wife, British Columbia native Ilona Herzberg, a producer on films including The River Wild, Evan Almighty, Waterworld, Rachel Getting Married and Feds, the 1988 comedy that starred Rebecca De Mornay and Mary Gross and was the only feature her husband directed in Hollywood.
Born in Hamilton, Ontario, Goldberg was the older son of Irwin, an aeronautical engineer, and Audrey, an artist.
He met Reitman for the first time in 1966 at McMaster University in his hometown, and he starred as a Mac freshman in a short film Orientation (1968), which Reitman wrote and directed. Fox acquired it and screened it in theaters before Peter Yates’ John and Mary (1969), starring Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow.
The pair then got into a spot of trouble when they produced The Columbus of Sex (1969) and were charged and fined with making and exhibiting an “obscene” film after showing it one time to the student body. The experience “bonded them and drove them to make it together,” Harris Goldberg said.
Danny Goldberg followed Reitman to Los Angeles, and over the decades, the pair would partner in writing, producing and/or directing capacities on The House by the Lake (1976), Meatballs (1979), Stripes (1981), Heavy Metal (1981), Feds, Junior (1994), Space Jam (1996), Private Parts (1997), Commandments (1997), Fathers’ Day (1997), Six Days Seven Nights (1998), Road Trip (2000), Evolution (2001), Killing Me Softly (2002), Old School (2003) and EuroTrip (2004).
For the small screen, Goldberg and Reitman shared an Emmy nomination for outstanding made for television movie in 1996 for producing HBO’s The Late Shift, and they worked on the 1994 Saturday morning CBS cartoon Beethoven.
After producing the Phillips-directed Road Trip, Old School and School for Scoundrels (2006), Goldberg got together with Phillips again and found spectacular success with The Hangover (2009), which starred Zach Galifianakis, Bradley Cooper and Ed Helms and grossed more than $469 million on a budget of $35 million.
Goldberg then produced the Phillips-directed Hangover sequels in 2011 and 2013 that raked in another $587 million and $362 million, respectively, plus Due Date (2011), another Galifianakis-starring comedy.
Survivors also include his sisters, Kathy and Amy.
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