Matt Zien is an American television and documentary film producer. He is known for developing and producing nonfiction series and feature documentaries, including The Curse of Von Dutch: A Brand to Die For, This Is Paris, ', and Slauson Rec (2025), which premiered in the Cannes Classics section of the Cannes Film Festival.
Zien studied at the University of Southern CaliforniaâÂÂs School of Cinematic Arts, where he developed a background in storytelling and documentary filmmaking.
Zien began his career in unscripted television development, working at All3Media America and Studio Lambert on reality and documentary projects for major networks.
In 2016, Zien joined The Intellectual Property Corporation (IPC) as its first development executive. He later became Vice-President of Development and Creative Director, and head of brand development for Industrial Media, overseeing more than 20 series and specials across HBO, Amazon, Netflix, Showtime, and A&E.
While at IPC, Zien developed the Emmy-winning series ' (A&E), which won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Series or Special in 2017 and Outstanding Hosted Nonfiction Series or Special in 2020.
He was promoted to senior vice-president prior to the sale of Industrial Media to Sony Pictures Television in 2022, a deal reportedly valued at US$350 million.
Zien served as producer on the true-crime docuseries The Curse of Von Dutch: A Brand to Die For (Hulu, 2021), which explored the turbulent rise and fall of the Von Dutch fashion brand.
In 2025 he produced Slauson Rec, a feature documentary directed by Leo Lewis OâÂÂNeil. The film, which uses more than 800 hours of footage to explore Shia LaBeoufâÂÂs theater collective, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. In an interview with Deadline, Zien described the independently funded project as âÂÂthe dream,â recalling that on the first day of post-production OâÂÂNeil wrote âÂÂWe Cannes do itâ on the office whiteboard.
In 2024, Zien produced Lincoln at Gettysburg, a 6-minute AI-driven short film that swept the AI International Film Festival, winning Best Picture, Best AI Film, Best Cinematography, Best Sound, plus Audience Choice Awards for Best Message, Best Film, and Best Use of AI.
In 2025, ZienâÂÂs AI-driven mockumentary The First Humans won the Mockumentary Award at the MetaMorph AI Film Awards. The festival described his work as pushing the boundaries of generative cinema, and Zien reflected in an accompanying interview on how AI enabled him to visualize 300,000 years of human prehistory.
Zien is the founder of KNGMKR Labs, a creative studio focused on experimental content at the intersection of cinema, technology, and culture. Alongside co-founder Mac Boucher, Zien has developed speculative, AI-assisted video-art projects including Camelot, an alternate-history JFK narrative created using generative tools. In a 2025 Forbes feature on emerging XR technologies, Matt Zien was described as a âÂÂnonfictionâÂÂTV and film vet turned AI filmmaker,â highlighting his crossover into AI-enhanced creative media. That same year, GamePressure covered his short video Last Call Before A.G.I., created with eight AI tools, noting that it was âÂÂso good that some have called it artâ in response to audience reactions on YouTube and Reddit. In 2025, ZienâÂÂs short film Forgive the Haters was cited during a Masters of Scale podcast interview with Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela, in a discussion about AI filmmakingâÂÂs impact on Hollywood.