Jeff Imada, Action Designer on the “Bourne” Films, Will Direct Two Features in a Five-Book Slate
- Jeff Imada is a stunt coordinator and action designer with more than 300 credits.
- He is teaming with author Debbie Bishop to develop five of her books for the screen.
- Imada will direct two of them, “The Chameleon” and “Enter The Game.”
Posted: October 22, 2026
Jeff Imada has spent four decades designing action — the Bourne pictures, “Fight Club,” “The Crow,” “They Live,” “L.A. Confidential,” “Escape From L.A.,” “Iron Man 2,” “The Green Hornet” and “Furious 7” among them. On Wednesday his company announced he is moving into the director’s chair on two features inside a five-book slate he is developing with author Debbie Bishop through her production company, Angelgate Entertainment.
The slate is PILLYWIGGIN Awakening, Black Tide, The Chameleon, Enter The Game and War Eagles. Imada directs The Chameleon and Enter The Game and works with Bishop on developing the rest.
What a stunt department will recognise in the announcement is the toolkit Imada brings to it. His work is built on Eastern martial arts traditions and covers weapons choreography, tactical movement and fight psychology — the discipline of designing a fight so that it reads as character rather than as a series of hits. He was the first person to design and manufacture the telescopic baton in the United States, wrote The Balisong Manual, and has been a member of Stunts Unlimited for decades.
The move is the one a lot of action designers describe wanting and few get: carrying a project from the page through the action design and into the chair, rather than being handed a script and asked to make the second unit work.
Learn more on IMDb: Jeff Imada
