Ken Atchity, Producer and Literary Manager, Dies at 82
Ken Atchity, an author, literary manager and producer, died Monday at 82 from kidney failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. His producing credits included The Meg and its sequel, Joe Somebody, Hysteria and Life or Something Like It. He also produced cable romantic films and ran Story Merchant Books.
Ken Atchity was born in Eunice, Louisiana, in January 1944 and grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. He attended Georgetown, edited The Hoya, studied at Cambridge one summer, earned a Yale master’s, and taught at Occidental College before entering entertainment in the 1980s.
His production work ranged from the Jason Statham shark films The Meg and Meg 2: The Trench to Tim Allen’s Joe Somebody, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Hysteria, and Angelina Jolie’s Life or Something Like It. He also produced cable romantic movies, a 1989 Amityville telefilm, and a Kennedy documentary, and led Story Merchant Books.
Atchity’s death may resonate most with authors and screenwriters who saw a model of moving between scholarship, literary representation, and film production. Clients and readers connected to Story Merchant Books could feel the loss of an advocate for adapting written work. Fans of his commercial films may also note how a producer’s career can span genre entertainment and smaller literary projects. The story may prompt reflection on the less visible managerial labor behind familiar titles.