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Benj Pasek and Justin Paul are among the most acclaimed creators of their generation, seamlessly shifting between, musical theater, film, stage, and television as composers, lyricists and producers.
They are best known for their Oscar, Grammy, and Tony-winning work on La La Land, The Greatest Showman and Dear Evan Hansen, each of which spawned albums that landed in the Top 10 on the Billboard 200, including multiple weeks at #1 for The Greatest Showman, which in 2018 was the world's best-selling album. In 2024, they joined a rarified list of artists by achieving EGOT status with their first Emmy Award win for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics for the song "Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It", co-written with Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, for Hulu's musical-themed third season of Only Murders in the Building, on which they also served as consulting producers. In total, Benj and Justin have each won two Tonys, two Grammys, two Emmys and an Oscar across six distinct projects, including their most recent 2025 Children's and Family Emmy Award for writing Sesame Street's heartwarming anthem "That's Why We Love Nature", performed by Brandi Carlile.
Their song "City of Stars" (co-written with Justin Hurwitz) from La La Land won the Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Original Song, with "Audition (The Fools Who Dream)" from the film also nominated for the Academy Award in the same category. They won their second Golden Globe for "This Is Me" (Academy Award and Grammy Award nominations) from The Greatest Showman, for which they also won the Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media. The stage adaptation of the hit musical film is currently in development with Disney Theatrical Group. For their original musical Dear Evan Hansen — which won six Tony Awards including Best Musical — the duo received an Obie Award, a Drama Desk Award, an Olivier Award, a Grammy Award, and the Tony Award for Best Score.
Their recent film and television credits include Apple's original live-action musical Spirited, for which their song "Good Afternoon" was shortlisted for the Oscar for Best Original Song; a full song score for Sony's live-action hybrid musical Lyle, Lyle Crocodile, with songs performed by Shawn Mendes; Disney's live-action Aladdin, featuring the Oscar-shortlisted song "Speechless", and Snow White; Dreamworks Animation's Trolls; Amazon's comedy series Harlem; Apple TV+'s Dear Edward; NBC's Smash; The CW's musical episode of The Flash; the Amazon concert documentary Pink: All I Know So Far (Grammy nomination for "All I Know So Far" co-written with Pink); and FX's sports documentary television series, Welcome to Wrexham. Pasek and Paul also co-founded Ampersand, a media production company through which they produce theatrical, immersive, film, television and digital content, including the two-time Webby award-winning digital show Celebrity Substitute.
Benj and Justin were awarded their second Tony Awards as co-producers of the Best Musical winner A Strange Loop, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. They made their Broadway composing debut with their Tony-nominated score for A Christmas Story, an adaptation of the classic holiday film, further adapted into a live telecast for Fox, for which they wrote the new song "In the Market for a Miracle" which marked their first Emmy nomination for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics. They additionally received a Daytime Emmy nomination for their song "Unlimited" featured in an Old Navy commercial.
Their early theatre work includes the acclaimed musical Dogfight (Lucille Lortel Award for Best New Musical); the children's musical James and the Giant Peach and the popular song cycle Edges. Among their numerous honours, they became the youngest winners ever of the Jonathan Larson Award and the first writers for stage or screen to be honoured with the ASCAP Vanguard Award. They are graduates of the University of Michigan Musical Theatre Program.
The Greatest Showman Creative team
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