DAVID B. SCHWARTZ spent 17 years at The Walt Disney Company, where he served as Assistant General Counsel.
David led a 20-person legal team in negotiating all of Disney’s agreements for the licensing of movies, TV shows and other entertainment content. He pioneered Disney’s film and television license agreements with companies like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google. He also negotiated extremely lucrative agreements with companies like Comcast, DirecTV, DISH, Starz, HBO, Showtime, Walmart, Target and numerous others. These deals included movies and TV series from beloved brands and franchises like Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, ABC, Disney Channel, Freeform, FX and Fox. Some of his particular favorite deals included negotiating the industry’s first motion picture VOD agreement with Apple’s iTunes, the first full major studio output agreement with Netflix, the Marvel series agreement with Netflix for Daredevil, Jessica Jones, et al, the agreement for The Simpsons to run on Disney+, and all of the major studio and platform agreements for Disney’s Movies Anywhere service. Overall, he handled many billions of dollars worth of content distribution deals for Disney, and considers it a true honor to have been entrusted with managing the legal aspects of such significant, ground-breaking deals, and such iconic brands.
David also spent 3 years at MGM, where he served as the Senior Vice President of their EPIX network and streaming service, heading up Film Acquisitions, Distribution, and Strategy & Business Development for the service. This provided him the opportunity to be a part of, and learn the perspective of, a streaming service and network.
In addition to working for those two legendary film studios, David began his career in the independent film world at Gold Circle Films, where he worked on both the production and distribution sides of business and legal affairs for indie films in all stages of development, production and distribution, including one of the biggest indie film hits of all time, My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
David also is a producer and writer. He is currently one of the lead producers of the new live stage musical Rutka, which debuted with a sold-out pair of concert presentations at Lincoln Center, followed by an initial out-of-town try-out production at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park in 2024. He’s also a lead producer of The Festival, a 3-day Broadway-themed music festival in New York’s Hudson River Valley debuting in August, 2026, which features a plethora of tremendous Broadway talent and which has been featured everywhere from Playbill to Forbes to The Today Show. Essentially, it’s Broadway meets Coachella. Additional producing works in progress include the feature films Post-Romantic Stress and Bennett. He’s also a writer, whose published graphic novels include Meltdown (Image Comics) and Idolized (Aspen Comics), among many others.
This broad set of experiences – working with both large studios and small indie producers; handling content sales and content acquisitions; working in content production, development and strategy; and working as an entrepreneur and creator himself – makes David a uniquely innovative, creative and knowledgeable deal-maker and counselor, who understands his clients’ business goals and combines his legal experience with deep knowledge of the industry and a collaborative, pragmatic approach.
David has lived about a third of his life in each of New York, Los Angeles and Miami, three of the great arts and entertainment centers in the U.S. He currently resides in the heart of the New York Theater District.