| Birth Date: | 16 March 1973[1] [2] |
| Birth Place: | Knoxville, Tennessee, U.S. |
| Occupation: | Producer |
| Employer: | Kane Studio, LLC |
| Education: | Samford University (BA) University of Georgia School of Law (JD) |
| Party: | Independent |
Patrick Neill Millsaps (born March 16, 1973) is an American attorney and film producer.
Millsaps was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and grew up in Cobb County, Georgia where he attended McEachern High School. He attended Samford University, initially to become a Southern Baptist preacher. He graduated in 1995 with a degree in psychology.
He enrolled in the University of Georgia School of Law in 1997.[3] Millsaps obtained his Juris Doctor in 2000.
After passing the Georgia bar in 2000, he worked for criminal defense attorneys Ed Garland and Don Samuel. He continued his early legal career as a litigator and later practiced law with his mentor, Hylton B. Dupree, Jr.
In 2001, six months after he received his bar license, Millsaps filed the first lawsuit on behalf of a charter school against a school district in the state of Georgia. Millsaps represented Stone Mountain Charter School in a lawsuit against the DeKalb County school board over funding which the school claimed it should have and did not receive.[4] The suit's premise was that the Dekalb school board was discriminating against the charter school and breaching the charter school contract by allotting less money per student than other schools in the district. The school board paid to settle the suit, though it denied any wrongdoing, citing the 1998 charter school law that did not provide guidelines for funding.[5]
Millsaps founded his own law firm in 2004, which merged in 2011 with Hall Booth Smith where he was partner.[6] [7] [8] Millsaps represented the Georgia Department of Community Health in 2008 as Special Counsel to Governor Sonny Perdue.[9] In 2010, Millsaps obtained a $1.5 million jury verdict for the family of a man that was killed by a drunk driver.[10] This was one of the top jury verdicts in Georgia in 2010.[11]
On December 26, 2011, Millsaps was contacted by Newt Gingrich's 2012 campaign for the Republican nomination for president to offer him a position as deputy general counsel—a volunteer position.[3] Millsaps joined the campaign, his first involvement working in a presidential race, the week before the Iowa caucuses.[12] [3] [13]
After a month working for the campaign, and orchestrating Gingrich's primary win in South Carolina, Gingrich promoted Millsaps to the position of chief of staff following the Florida primary and immediately made changes to reorganize the campaign's structure.[12] [3] [13]
Millsaps began his career in show business as a talent manager. He then transitioned to film production. His first film as executive producer occurred by happenstance. A principal backer of the film, representing 20% of the budget, pulled out just 5 days before shooting was scheduled to begin.[14] The producers of the film sought Millsaps' assistance and Millsaps was able to secure the required financing in less than a day.[14] I'll see You In My Dreams starring Blythe Danner and Sam Elliott was completed on a $1million budget, with a subsequent box office of more than $7million. The film premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.[15]
In December 2015, Millsaps founded Londonderry Entertainment, a talent management and production company.[16] The company was subsequently restructured, with three subsidiaries, a film finance and production company, a television and digital media finance and production company, and a targeted film marketing company.[17] Londonderry ceased operations in 2018.
In 2019, Millsaps founded Kane Studio, a real estate development company, to design and build a new production studio in Georgia. The Kane project will be located in an Opportunity Zone. The facility is expected to be operational in the summer of 2022, and is projected to include a film and television production studio on a 1500 acre site, with more than 650,000 square feet of sound stages.[18] In 2009, Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue signed the first tax incentive bill to encourage film and television production in the state of Georgia.[19] [20] At the time the legislation was enacted, Governor Perdue credited Millsaps for his contribution to the effort.[21]
In 2016, like many in the entertainment industry, Millsaps was a vocal critic of the Georgia General Assembly's so-called "Religious Liberty" bill, warning that passage would result in a Hollywood boycott negatively impacting the state economy.[22] Under pressure from a chorus of detractors, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal vetoed the controversial piece of legislation.[23]
In the wake of the May, 2017 bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, Millsaps penned on open letter to Grande that went viral globally.[24] After sharing the letter on Twitter,[25] it has been viewed millions of times and shared over 100,000 times and liked by pop stars Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Nicki Minaj and Grande herself.[26] Millsaps' letter received worldwide media attention.[27] [28] [29] In 2018, Millsaps' letter was published in a book entitled "Letters to Change the World: From Pankhurst to Orwell" by Travis Elborough.[30]