Austin Film Festival Announces First Honorees for 2026

A legendary producer behind franchises stretching from Diary of a Wimpy Kid to The Hunger Games and the writer who cracked the code of adapting The Boys for the small screen will both be honored at this year’s Austin Film Festival (Oct. 29-Nov. 5) with the festival’s two biggest awards.

Created in 2019, the Polly Platt Award for Producing is named after indie producer and designer Polly Platt, a behind-the-scenes legend, longtime friend of AFF, and one-time stunt double for Nancy Sinatra in The Wild Angels. This year, the prize goes to Hollywood veteran Nina Jacobson, who joins a list of prior winners that include inaugural honoree Sarah Green (The Tree of Life, Mud), Christine Vachon (Carol, Boys Don’t Cry), Kathleen Kennedy (Jurassic Park, E.T.), Lauren Shuler Donner (Superman, Deadpool), Dede Gardner (12 Years a Slave, F1, Moonlight), and Stephanie Allain (Dear White People, Hustle & Flow).

Jacobson has more than earned her spot alongside these industry icons. While she didn’t get her first producer credit until 2010 with Diary of a Wimpy Kid, she’d been a force in the development of dozens of pictures since joining Silver Pictures in 1988 as director of film development. Her early projects include Dazed and Confused and 12 Monkeys for Universal, and Antz for DreamWorks SKG. She then became president for Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group at the Walt Disney Company, working on megafranchises like Pirates of the Caribbean and critical and box-office smashes like The Sixth Sense. In 2007, she formed her own company, Color Force, which has seen her reach new heights with TV shows like Pose and the recent Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, as well as continuing her cinematic successes with the Hunger Games franchise (including the upcoming The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping) and even a reunion with Richard Linklater for Where’d You Go, Bernadette.

AFF’s Outstanding Television Writer Award will be given to AFF alum Eric Kripke, the creator, executive producer, showrunner of The Boys and Supernatural Credit: Austin Film Festival

While the award ceremony will be a chance to highlight the essential but so often unheralded role of the producer, this year’s winner of the Outstanding Television Writer Award goes to a storyteller whose name will be well known to genre fans. It’s actually the second time that AFF has lauded Eric Kripke, as he took home both the jury and audience awards for Narrative Student Short in 1997 for “Truly Committed.” Now he’s joining prior writer award honorees like Yvette Lee Bowser (Living Single, Black-ish), Ronald D. Moore (Battlestar Galactica, Outlander), Damon Lindelof (Lost, Watchmen), Larry Wilmore (The Bernie Mac Show, The Nightly Show), Marta Kauffman (Friends, Grace and Frankie), and Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul) for his creation of the Voughtverse. 

Yes, Kripke was responsible for the seemingly impossible task of adapting Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s hyperviolent superhero spoof The Boys for the small screen. Not only did he pull that off, but he’s also helped spawn an ever-expanding library of spin-offs, including Gen V, The Boys Presents: Diabolical, and the upcoming seriesVought Rising. And this came after he created one of the most popular and long-running horror shows of all time, Supernatural, starring future Austin residents Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki.

The award ceremony will take place Oct. 31 as part of the AFF conference. Badges and film passes for the festival and conference are available now at austinfilmfestival.com.

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