Zach Cregger

Zach Cregger is an American comedian, actor, writer, and filmmaker whose work moved from sketch comedy to studio horror. Born in Arlington, Virginia, on March 1, 1981, he studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. In the early 2000s, he became a founding member of The Whitest Kids U'Know, the comedy troupe formed with Trevor Moore, Sam Brown, Timmy Williams, Darren Trumeter. The group brought absurdist sketches to television through Fuse and IFC, and its self-titled series ran for five seasons from 2007 to 2011. Cregger performed in sketches including recurring characters and helped write them. With Moore, Cregger co-wrote and co-directed the 2009 comedy Miss March. He also starred as Eugene Bell, one of two friends who set out to find a former girlfriend after waking from a four-year coma. The film features Craig Robinson and Hugh Hefner and uses a Playboy Mansion storyline; it received a wide theatrical release from 20th Century Fox. Cregger subsequently played Owen O'Malley on NBC's comedy About a Boy, appearing in its 2014-2015 run. His acting credits also include the sitcom Wrecked, where he portrayed the stranded survivor Owen O'Connor across three TBS comedy seasons from 2016 through 2018. Cregger reached a substantially wider film audience with Barbarian, the horror feature he wrote and directed for 20th Century Studios. Released in 2022, it begins when Tess Marshall, played by Georgina Campbell, arrives at a Detroit rental house and finds Keith Toshko, played by Bill Skarsgard, already there. The story then expands beyond that uneasy booking conflict into the house's hidden spaces and an interconnected history involving AJ Gilbride, an actor played by Justin Long. Barbarian earned more than $45 million worldwide against a reported budget of about $4.5 million, and its shifting structure became a major point of discussion. After Barbarian, Cregger developed Weapons, another original horror film for New Line Cinema. The project was announced after a competitive rights sale, and its cast includes Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher, Benedict Wong, and Amy Madigan. Cregger has described the film as a multi-perspective story centered on the unexplained disappearance of children from the same school class. His progression from troupe-based sketch performance to carefully constructed genre filmmaking is marked by his control of both writing and direction, while his television work preserves the comic timing that defined The Whitest Kids U'Know's work in 2007.