Ken Atchity, Producer on ‘Joe Somebody’ and ‘The Meg,’ Dies at 82

Ken Atchity, an author and professor who became a literary manager and producer on such films as Joe Somebody, Hysteria and The Meg, has died. He was 82.

Atchity died Monday of kidney failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, his longtime business and producing partner, Chi-Li Wong, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Atchity also was behind 16 romantic telefilms made under the banner of Shades of Love that were produced for cable and video. They ran in Canada and on HBO/Cinemax in the States and were released internationally by Warner Bros.

Atchity produced the shark thriller The Meg (2018) and its sequel, Meg 2: The Trench (2023), both starring Jason Statham. (Jon Turteltaub directed the first installment, Ben Wheatley the second.)

In addition to Joe Somebody (2001), starring Tim Allen, and Hysteria (2011), starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, Atchity produced features including Life or Something Like It (2002), starring Angelina Jolie, and Gospel Hill (2008), directed by Giancarlo Esposito.

Other producing credits included the 1989 telefilm The Amityville Horror: The Evil Escapes and the 2010 documentary The Kennedy Detail.

An author of more than 20 books, Atchity headed Story Merchant Books, selling his clients’ work to publishers and to film and television outlets while publishing many other works himself.

One of five kids, Kenneth John Atchity was born on Jan. 16, 1944, in Eunice, Louisiana. Raised in Kansas City, Missouri, he graduated from Rockhurst High School with an Ignatian Scholarship to study at Georgetown University (while in high school, he published his first book reviews for The Kansas City Star).

At Georgetown, Atchity majored in Classics and English, served as editor-in-chief of the student-run newspaper The Hoya and spent his junior summer at Cambridge University in England, studying literature and social institutions.

While earning his master’s degree at Yale, he studied under A. Bartlett Giamatti and Erich Segal, then taught for more than a decade at Occidental College in L.A. before getting into show business in the 1980s.

Survivors include his wife, Kayoko, whom he married in 2003; his children, Vincent and Rosemary; his grandchildren, Margaret, Edward, Oliver, Eliot and Louis; and his sisters, Mary and Laurie.

Donations in his memory can be made Yoga Gives Back, which aims to empower women and children in India.