Founder of the Hallmark Channel and Emmy; Award winner Robert Halmi Jr. currently serves as Chairman of Great Point Media Ltd., which provides financing and financial services to the television industry. His career as a film producer began in 1980 with Wilson's Reward, which garnered numerous awards, including a gold medal at the Houston Film Festival. He has produced more than 200 movies and miniseries for television, including Dreamkeeper, Dinotopia, Arabian Nights, The 10th Kingdom, Cleopatra, Alice in Wonderland, The Baby Dance and Lonesome Dove, which earned seven Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award for Best Miniseries. Recent Halmi Jr. "event" productions include Neverland, Treasure Island, Tin Man, Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven, King Solomon's Mines, La Femme Musketeer, Frankenstein, Frederick Forsyth's Icon, Supernova, Jules Verne's Mysterious Island and The Poseidon Adventure. Other recent projects include the Flash Gordon and Farscape series, both produced for Syfy. His other more recent television movies also include Street Warrior, Mask of the Ninja, Depth Charge, Ring of Death, Grave Misconduct, The Deadliest Lesson (aka Detention), Backwoods, Finish Line, Primal Doubt, Dark Beauty (aka Black Widow), The Governor's Wife (aka Deadly Suspicion), Crash And Burn, Black Friday, Sharpshooter, Panic Button (aka Point of Entry) and While The Children Sleep (aka The Sitter), among many others. In 1984, at age 26, Halmi Jr. became President of RHI Entertainment Inc. (RHI) a publicly traded entertainment company founded by his father. In 1994, RHI was sold to Hallmark Cards Inc. and Halmi Jr. became President and CEO of Hallmark Entertainment, the successor to RHI. For over a decade, Hallmark Entertainment was the largest supplier of movies and miniseries in the television industry, garnering more Emmy nominations for television movies than any other production company in the history of television. Under Halmi Jr.'s guidance, Hallmark Entertainment produced over 2,000 hours of television programming. These shows received 458 Emmy; nominations and have garnered 105 Emmy Awards. From 1994-2005, Hallmark Entertainment provided four of the top five highest rated US miniseries and movies made for television, including 2004's highest rated original movie, Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Their productions also topped the ratings charts of the major basic cable networks: Earthsea for Syfy Channel (their highest rated miniseries in 2005), Meet the Santas for Hallmark Channel (highest rated in the history of the network at the time), and Human Trafficking for Lifetime, the highest rated miniseries on basic cable for 2005. In 1995, Halmi Jr. was instrumental in forming Crown Media Holdings, where he founded The Hallmark Channel. The Hallmark Channel delivers high quality, broad appeal, entertainment programming. In 2000, Crown Media went public on the Nasdaq stock exchange. In January 2006, Halmi Jr., along with members of senior management and affiliates, acquired all the ownership interest in Hallmark Entertainment, LLC (a wholly owned subsidiary of Hallmark Cards) and re-launched the company as RHI Entertainment, LLC. In June 2011, Robert Halmi Jr. left RHI to form Great Point Media where he serves as Chairman. Great Point Media, produces, distributes, and finances television, feature films and music.
