Next Gen 2010: Hollywood's Young Guns

"In Germany it's frowned upon to do something that doesn't award you a [real] job," the Hamburg native says. "I used to say I was a journalist because it was more accepted." Stamm eventually went public with his love for cinema at the Baden-Wuerttemberg Film Academy in Ludwigsburg, where he studied for four years, after which he moved to Los Angeles to study directing at the American Film Institute. His first feature, A Necessary Death -- a dark mockumentary about a voyeuristic director and a suicidal man -- won the AFI Fest's top prize in 2008 and got Stamm hired to direct last summer's hit thriller The Last Exorcism, which grossed more than $41 million domestically. He's busy helming the second installment of M. Night Shyamalan's Night Chronicles.