The Illusionist

Neil Norman Burger is an American film director who has filmed the pseudo-documentary Interview with the Assassin (2002), the period drama The Illusionist, and the 2011 thriller Limitless.

Life and career

After attending the Greenwich Country Day School and Brunswick School in Greenwich CT, Burger graduated from Yale University with a degree in fine arts and later became involved with experimental film in the 1980s. He then went on to direct music videos for such alternative artists as the Meat Puppets and used his renown and connections to approached MTV in 1991 with the idea to create and direct a series of promotional spots for what would be the MTV “Books: Feed Your Head” campaign against aliteracy. In an interview with Shave Magazine Neil described his work as “almost like PSA’s but they weren’t really; they were like music videos for literature and language.”

Burger, who directed and wrote Interview with an Assassin, won Best Feature for the film at the Woodstock Film Festival.Interview with the Assassin was also been nominated for three Independent Spirit Awards, including best First Feature.

Burger filmed The Illusionist, which he adapted for the big screen from the Steven Millhauser short story, “Eisenheim the Illusionist.” The Illusionist premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. The film also opened the 2006 Seattle International Film Festival and had a limited release in theaters on August 18, 2006.

Burger has said that he is working on adapting “The Big Knockover,” a short story by Dashiell Hammett.

Burger is set to direct a drama for Universal that follows criminals in New York City who band together to search and take out terrorists themselves, when the police searches begin interfering with their business.

In June, 2009, The Hollywood Reporter’s Risky Biz Blog reported that Universal and Imagine Entertainment were in talks with Neil Burger to write and direct a remake of Bride of Frankenstein.

In July 2009, Paramount Pictures has been planned live-action adaptation of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.

In July, 2011, Variety reported that Burger was to direct the film adaptation of the video game Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. He has since left the project to direct and adaptation of Veronica Roth’s novel Divergent for Summit Entertainment.

Burger has been married to Diana Warner Kellogg, an architect, since 1997. —Wikipedia