Next Gen 2011: Hollywood's Fastest-Rising Stars
A wide variety of college internships -- Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, research for Errol Morris' The Fog of War, Gold Circle Films -- led Boston native and Harvard grad Eirich, 30, to Los Angeles in 2004 with writing aspirations. That is, until his friends urged him to "get a real job," which he did, working for CAA's Jay Baker for a year in 2005. He landed an assistant's gig with then-Universal Pictures chairman Stacey Snider in 2006 and has been with her ever since, following her to DreamWorks as her creative assistant and subsequently earning promotions up the development ranks. "She still acts like she's a 23-year-old assistant trying to get promoted, and it's amazing that she doesn't take anything for granted," Eirich says. "She always wants to be up on everything, and that's inspiring." Since early 2008, Eirich has worked on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and "DreamWorks 2.0" projects Cowboys & Aliens, The Help and I Am Number Four, which he championed early in book form at the studio. And he's always looking for more. Eirich's Saturday mornings are spent playing a round of golf before heading to the local Coffee Bean for hours of script reading. "You can never get lazy," he says. "You can never get complacent about finding new material, finding new writers."
