Next Gen 2010: Hollywood's Young Guns

Prakash still shudders at the memory of the "really terrible gothic horror film" he made while getting his bachelor's in film and TV from Northwestern. It featured the attack of a young girl studying inside a church. "I have no idea why she was studying in there," he laughs. Today, the Universal exec, who holds a degree in economics (with a minor in computer science) from Princeton and an MBA from Wharton, is one of the stutio's key evaluators of M&A opportunities. Among them: last year's sale of Rogue Pictures to Relativity and acquiring stakes in such European production companies as Cattleya and UFA. Prakash, who hopes to transition into production and distribution, says there's only thing he loves more than movies: "The Boston Red Sox ... I'm a fanatic."