Tony Amatullo, a location manager and producer with credits including Fame, The Goonies, The Color Purple and 2 Days in the Valley, has died. He was 76.
Amatullo died Sunday of acute myeloid leukemia at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, his son Nico Amatullo told The Hollywood Reporter.
The native New Yorker also served from 2000-05 as vp production at Warner Bros., where he worked on series including ER, The West Wing and Third Watch. And for his final project, he executive produced, directed and co-wrote Surviving on LES (2021), about gentrification and the changing culture of Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
“Tony often compared producing to walking a tightrope — balancing creativity, logistics and big personalities,” his family said. “It was a challenge he embraced wholeheartedly, bringing both a passion for storytelling and a steady hand to every project throughout his career.”
Born and raised in Hell’s Kitchen, Tony Eugene Amatullo Jr. attended Power Memorial High School before earning his bachelor’s degree in Film, Cinema and Video Studies from City University of New York.
Not long after graduating, he moved across the country to pursue a career in the entertainment industry and worked as a production assistant and then as a location manager for commercials, television and film.
He was an associate producer on the 1980s TV series Fame and Miami Vice and a location manager on two notable films released in 1985, Richard Donner’s The Goonies and Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple.
Amatullo also was a line producer on Above Suspicion (1995), starring Christopher Reeve and Joe Mantegna, and an executive producer on the John Herzfeld neo-noir 2 Days in the Valley (1996) and on the Reelz reality series Beverly Hills Pawn in 2013-14.
Survivors include his wife, Mariana, the daughter of an Argentine diplomat whom he met on a tour bus in Kyoto, Japan, and his sons, Nico and Leonardo.
“Tony found joy in the day-to-day moments of life,” his family noted, “gardening, making the perfect pizza at his home in Pasadena, taking long walks through downtown Manhattan, swimming daily, fishing and hunting for antiques and hidden treasures in the many flea markets he visited around the world. … He will be deeply missed and forever remembered by all those who loved him.”
