Necrology

Kevin Joseph Burns '77

Jun. 18, 1955-Sep. 27, 2020

Kevin Joseph Burns ’77, founder and president of ­Prometheus Entertainment, was a ­prolific and Emmy award-winning ­television producer who also wrote and directed.

His recent success included involvement in an update for Netflix of the old Lost in Space television series. Prometheus Entertainment’s many credits include the popular History channel shows Ancient Aliens and The Curse of Oak Island.

He was born on June 18, 1955, in Schenectady, N.Y., a son of Joseph and Ann Burns. At Hamilton, Burns majored in history and English, and outside of class worked on The Spectator and the Roots in the Glen yearbook. He also was active in Delta Phi fraternity, serving as its president, and was a class officer. He participated in Root-Jessup Public Affairs and received a College social service award. At one point after he graduated, he volunteered for the Alumni Fund as a free agent for his class.

Burns once told a College representative of his gratitude for the broad experience his Hamilton education gave him inside and outside the classroom. He said he was indebted to history professors David Ellis and David Millar for encouraging him to attend film school, when the proper route was law school.

Apparently heeding the professors, Burns went to graduate school to study film, earning a master’s degree in 1980 from the Boston University’s School of Public Communication. A film he made as a student won a Documentary Achievement Award for Student Filmmaking Oscar. IMBd describes his I Remember Barbra as “a humorous and slightly irreverent documentary short which profiled ­Barbra Streisand’s native Brooklyn.”

In 1993, according to the Prometheus website, Burns, who worked as an executive at Twentieth Century Fox Television, co-founded Foxstar Productions, which developed and produced a series of Alien Nation television movies. In 1994, he founded Van Ness Films, a Foxstar subsidiary, where he produced 166 episodes of the hit series Biography for A&E and Hollywood-related documentaries.

In 1999, Prometheus says, Burns co-founded Synthesis Entertainment and began developing and producing sequels of Irwin Allen’s movies and television series, including Lost in Space. In 2016, Synthesis and Legendary Entertainment launched the new Lost in Space that premiered on Netflix in 2018.

Burns’ career intersected with his Hamilton roots, when Carl Rubino, now the Winslow Professor of Classics Emeritus Edward North Professor of Classics, appeared in a Lucasfilm documentary, Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed, which aired on the History channel in 2007. Burns produced and directed the special in which Rubino discussed Star Wars’ roots in mythology.

Burns, of Beverly Hills, Calif., died on Sept. 27, 2020, at the age of 65. His ­survivors include a niece.

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