films. Together they formed the production company Black and White, which closed in 2006. White is not a fan of classic rock, but he wrote School of Rock specifically so Black could perform his own favorite rock music. White made his directorial debut with the self-penned Year of the Dog at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. He was a member of the US Dramatic Jury at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Laura Dern brought White into a project with HBO which became the series Enlightened that premiered on October 10, 2011. Dern's character, Amy Jellicoe, goes to a Hawaiian retreat after her professional life publicly implodes, and is introduced to meditation. White himself had suffered an on-the-job meltdown while running an earlier television series, and incorporated elements of that experience, as well as his own exploration of Buddhist meditation, into the new series' plot. White wrote the pilot and all the episodes in the first and second seasons. White is a credited writer on The Emoji Movie, he spent three weeks with the film's screenwriters, and helped with the structure of the script. For this project he received a Golden Raspberry Award. He wrote and directed the 2017 film Brad's Status. In 2021, White created, wrote, and directed The White Lotus, a satirical limited series for HBO. In February 2022, it was announced White would write two upcoming animated films for Universal Pictures and Illumination: the original comedy Migration, set to be released on June 30, 2023, and the fourth installment in the Despicable Me franchise, set to be released on July 23, 2024. The Amazing Race He appeared on the fourteenth season of The Amazing Race along with his father Mel. They lasted for seven legs before being eliminated in sixth place in Phuket, Thailand. Mel and Mike returned to compete in The Amazing Race: Unfinished Business, where they were the second team eliminated in Japan after they both developed hypothermia. Survivor White was a contestant on Survivor: David vs. Goliath, as a member of the Goliath tribe, then to reshuffled Jabeni tribe and the merged Kalokalo tribe. He made it to Day 39 and received three jury votes, finishing in second place behind the winner Nick Wilson. White said he had been a big fan of the show, and because of his connections had developed a friendship with the show's host Jeff Probst, providing the host suggestions towards