Thomas Tull

After college, Tull abandoned plans to become a lawyer and instead went into business, starting a chain of laundromats. Among his innovations were different prices according to demand at different times of day. Tull next went into the field of financing, buying and selling several tax and accounting offices.[7] He later became chief of operations of Tax Services of America.[9] His business was buying units from franchisees of Jackson Hewitt Tax Services rolling up and consolidating operations. People who had established franchised locations often preferred being salaried managers. In 2001, Tull left Interactive Technology Funds to join the Convex Group, an Atlanta-based investment group.[10][11] His firm invested in entertainment, where Tull began to learn the entertainment business. After discussing the potential of private equity with a film executive in 2003, Tull quit Convex, raising $600 million in equity to finance the production of movies under the Legendary Pictures banner.[6]

Tull founded Legendary Entertainment in 2005, becoming the CEO and chairman.[12] The company entered into a partnership in 2005 with Warner Bros. to jointly finance and produce films.[7] In 2009, Tull became the majority shareholder of Legendary, in a buyout of the original investors.[7] The Warner deal was followed by a similar deal with Universal Studios in 2013. He also helped produce the film Blackhat. Legendary was one of the first film production companies to use technology and data analytics to improve the way movies are marketed. Shortly after starting Legendary, Tull built a new analytics division within the company, which uses data to improve marketing decisions, in addition to other key decisions.[13][14][15]

In January 2016, Legendary was acquired by the Wanda Cultural Industry Group for $3.5 billion, with Tull retaining a 20% stake. One year later, in January 2017, Tull left the company.[16][17]

Tull describes himself as a "fanboy" of comics, and several of the films produced by Legendary were personal favorites of Tull, including Watchmen, 300, and Dark Knight.[8] Watchmen had been in "development hell" for years when Tull arranged to pick up the rights.[8] 300 had been turned down by other studios.[7] Tull also describes himself as a "gamer", and co-founded the short-lived Brash Entertainment to work on film-to-video game conversions.[6][18] Other major films include Inception, The Hangover and its sequels, Man of Steel, and others.

In 2017, Tull founded Tulco, LLC, a Pittsburgh-based privately held holding company.[19] Tulco invests in companies in large industries and helps its portfolio companies apply technology such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and predictive data analytics.[20] Among Tulco’s investments are FIGS, a healthcare apparel company,[21] and Acrisure, an insurance broker that acquired Tulco’s AI insurance business in July 2020 for $400 million.[22][23]

Tull has also invested in a variety of other AI and data science-driven companies including Luvos,[24] Genies,[25] Oculus,[26] and Zoox.[27]

As an actor

As an actor