Bio & Resume

Of the many features Steve Saklad has production designed, he is best known for the movie musical reboot of The Muppets in 2011. In 2021 he designed another magical foray into movie musicals with the Lionsgate picture, Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar, which the Los Angeles Film Critics Association awarded Best Film Production Design of 2021. Musical theater is in his bones, having trained at the Yale School of Drama and worked under Tony Walton and David Mitchell, two of the Broadway’s greatest set designers.

Over the course of two decades, he has designed five features for writer/director Jason Reitman. These include the Oscar nominated Juno and Up in the Air, the latter garnering Steve a nomination from the Art Director's Guild for best contemporary feature film. For Sam Raimi he has designed the classic Grand Guignol melodrama, Drag Me to Hell. For Phil Lord and Chris Miller, he designed the Sony blockbuster, 22 Jump Street.

In Television Steve has created the opulent world of hip-hop music on the Fox series Empire for Lee Daniels and Danny Strong, a show that won him a nomination for best contemporary 1-hour series from the ADG.  He followed it up with Star, another Fox series for Lee Daniels featuring a trio just starting out in the music industry. For the ABC series Grand Hotel, he created the lavish interiors of a fictitious Miami Beach resort complex. His career designing commercials has spanned three decades starting in 1994.

His most recent credits include a live-action feature reboot of Chip & Dale: Rescue Rangers for Disney Studios, a modern exorcism film for Lee Daniels and Netflix called The Deliverance, and an evocative period picture for Lionsgate based on the book Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. And yes, the latter includes two musical numbers.