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DeVon Franklin's father, like his father before him, was an alcoholic. His drinking cost him his job as a manager at UPS, the family's home, car and a tidy "All-American" lifestyle in the suburbs of San Francisco. He would go on benders, leaving Franklin's mother, him and his two brothers for long spells at a time, forcing them to fend for themselves.

Donald Franklin, his father, died of a heart attack at the age of 36. Franklin, then 9, was a socially awkward, "bigheaded" boy of good spirit, but who suffered from a chronic case of middle child syndrome. 

"At a young age I had a lot of frustrations," said Franklin, now 33 and a Vice President at Columbia Pictures, a division of Sony, in the lobby of a posh hotel in New York City last week. "When you grow up in a family of alcoholics, I think that you can go either one of two ways - you go one way where you may go the same path or you overcompensate and go the other way." 

Franklin went the other way. 

He used a combination of religious faith, pent up frustrations and an intense feeling of displacement to fuel a rise to lofty spiritual and professional heights. Franklin is an emerging Hollywood powerhouse, a young hit-maker behind such films as 'The Pursuit of Happyness,' 'The Karate Kid (the 2010 version),' 'Hancock' and the recently released hit 'Jumping The Broom.' It's not a coincidence that many of the films he's worked on either star or are co-produced by Will Smith. Franklin got his start as an intern for Smith and partner James Lassiter's Overbrook Entertainment.