Shane Stanley

Shane Stanley is a multi-Emmy® Award-winning filmmaker and best-selling author who grew up in/around “the biz” in Hollywood. As a childhood actor he had appeared on-screen in over 100 projects with Hollywood legends which included June Lockhart, Lloyd Haynes, and David Arkin. By age ten, he was comfortably running an Arri 16mm camera and Moviola and fell in love with the filmmaking process. Along with his father, Lee Stanley, Shane produced The Desperate Passage Series. The docu-drama series ran on KTLA with world-wide syndication and was nominated for 33 individual Emmy® Awards and won 13 statues. Two episodes of the series went on to become successful feature films including Gridiron Gang which was acquired by Sony Pictures and became a #1 box office hit starring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson.

Shane served as Vice President of Sheen/Michaels Entertainment where he produced several motion pictures starring Marlon Brando, Mira Sorvino, Thomas Hayden Church, Donald Sutherland, Marisa Tomei, Sean Penn, John Travolta and of course, Charlie and Martin Sheen. During that time, Shane made his directorial debut with his own screenplay, A Sight for Sore Eyes. The film was honored with the Special Jury Award at WorldFest Houston, won two Telly Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Film & Television, as well as winning top honors at the International Family Film Festival along with Walden Media’s The Chronicles of Narnia. It went on to win dozens of prestigious awards and was invited to screen at Cannes in 2005.

Shane has also directed countless music videos, many which have aired on VH1’s Top 20 Video Countdown, including two that went #1 and another that made the network’s list of Best 100 Music Videos including “Go That Far” with Bret Michaels. The Michaels’ video was used for the television series Rock of Love, where Shane also served as a consulting producer. His other directing credits include Mistrust, starring two-time Golden Globe® winner Jane Seymour as well as Break Even with Tasya Teles, Steve Guttenberg, and Golden Globe® nominee, Joanna Pacula. Since the Global Pandemic, Shane produced and directed the action-comedy, Double Threat starring Matthew Lawrence and Dawn Olivieri (Yellowstone, 1883), which The New York Times listed on their Top 5-Action Movies to Stream Now and was the sole indie feature amongst Hollywood blockbusters on Amazon Prime's “Top 10 in the US” list remaining there for two months, peaking at #4. The film has enjoyed similar success on Netflix’s world-wide charts, ranking #1 in 16 of 17 countries in its debut and remains on the platform’s list of most watched films in 2024.

Shane’s action-thriller, Night Train, starring Danielle C. Ryan and Diora Baird premiered on HULU where it reached #1 on the platform and remained in the top spot for an astonishing four weeks. Night Train is the story of a single mom struggling to make ends meet as a Hollywood teamster who evades capture by a ruthless FBI Agent while running black market medical supplies in her legendary souped-up pickup truck. It also stars Joe Lando, Ivan Sergei, and Joseph D. Reitman.

Currently, Shane is adding the final touches on Six Days in Evergreen a music-drama starring Dawn Olivieri, Penelope Ann Miller, A Martinez, and a star-studded cast which he produced, directed, and co-wrote and is in post-production on The Legend of Van Dorn, the epic tale of Earl Van Dorn, a General of the Civil War whose vulnerability to his personal demons ultimately led to his demise which radically changed the outcome of the war allowing the North to finally prevail.

Shane’s book, “What You Don’t Learn in Film School,” a best-seller earning a 4.5-star rating across the board was listed by CNN and FORBES among the Best Filmmaking Books of All-Time, which covers filmmaking from concept to delivery. In 2025, the Audio version of the book was recognized as the “Best-Selling Movie Production Audiobook of All Time” by BookAuthority and has landed on required reading lists at several universities around the world and is endorsed by some of the most respected names in Hollywood including Producer, Neal H. Moritz, (Fast & Furious, S.W.A.T., 21 and 22 Jump Street), Jeff Sagansky, former President of Sony Pictures and CBS Studios, and Paul Williams, Oscar®, Golden Globe® and Grammy® Award Winner and Hall of Fame songwriter.

In addition to his Emmy® Awards, Stanley has received 11 Telly Awards, 2 CINE Golden Eagles Awards, 5 Aurora Awards, 4 WorldFest Remi Awards, and 28 International Film Festival Awards. He has spoken at several prestigious film and art institutes around the country including The Screen Writers Expo, the world’s largest tradeshow for screenwriters, alongside Oliver Stone, Michael Goldenberg (Harry Potter franchise) and Adam Herz (American Pie) about the secrets of marketing to today’s youth. He is on several advisory boards for film schools and art programs across the country and is a contributing columnist for Student Filmmakers Magazine and as well as an instructor on , and and SXSW. In April 2021 he testified before the US Library of Congress on behalf of prestigious universities to help amend a 1978 copyright law that made traditional learning difficult for film school students during the COVID/virtual learning era.

Shane is active in charities supporting cancer research, restoring hope for inner-city youth, and animal rescue and lives outside of Los Angeles.