John Ptak

John Ptak is an executive in the motion picture industry.
Biography
He began his career in the entertainment industry in 1968 when, after graduating from the University Of California, Los Angeles, he joined the staff of the American Film Institute in its first year, where he was part of the team that established AFI's Center for Advanced Studies in Los Angeles. While a student, he worked his way through college as a theatre manager and film programmer for Stanley Warner Theatres, The Walter Reade Organization and the Laemmle Theatres in Los Angeles, as well as for UCLA, where he oversaw film programming for five years.
In 1971, he became an agent with International Famous Agency, now International Creative Management, moving to the William Morris Agency in 1976 and to Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in 1991. He left CAA in 2006 to form his own company, Arsenal, which provides strategic advisory services to motion picture production companies and film financiers as well as for the sourcing and securing of financing and distribution arrangements and talent for independent films.
As an agent, Ptak was principally involved in the representation of motion picture talent, with an emphasis on directors, producers and independent films. Early in his career he was responsible for setting up such films as ', Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws, National Lampoon's Vacation and Taxi Driver.
Ptak's clients have included Intermedia, National Lampoon, Michael and Julia Phillips, and Rysher Entertainment.
Ptak is the co-chairman of the American Film Institute's National Center for Film and Video Preservation and a member of the National Film Preservation Board for the Library of Congress, and sits on the Board of Directors of the National Film Preservation Foundation as well as the Motion Picture & Television Fund Foundation.
Ptak's company, Arsenal, has provided services for such entities as Kadokawa Pictures, a leading Japanese publishing and film production, distribution and exhibition company, Wild Bunch, a production, sales and distribution company based in Paris, Endgame Entertainment, an established film production company and financier, Relativity Media, Spitfire and Hammer Films, Halifax Films and Studio Hamburg. The films that Arsenal has participated in include:

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