Julie's Bio

Julie Herlocker grew up in the Midwest, where her father’s passion for movies and tv was contagious, leaving her with a lifelong love of classic Westerns and thrillers with a sense of humor. She made her way to Los Angeles, and learned the craft of filmmaking on set and in post. 

Before transitioning to directing, Julie established herself as a post producer in episodic television, supervising the finish of more than 300 episodes and working closely with some of the industry’s strongest creative teams and showrunners. Her credits include Millennium, The West Wing, Steven Spielberg Presents Taken, Skin, Las Vegas, Grimm, and Dietland. She spent more than 2,400 hours directing actors on the ADR stage while guiding each episode through every stage of post-production. This experience gave her an understanding of story, performance, pacing, and the collaborative process required to bring a showrunner’s vision through to final delivery.

Herlocker joined the DGA when she was directing insert units for NBC’s “Las Vegas” starring James Caan and  Josh Duhamel.  Her first short film, the dramatic comedy Peter’s Ashes, was created to demonstrate her readiness to direct while she was a producer on NBC’s Grimm. Showrunners Jim Kouf and David Greenwalt embraced the film. Herlocker made her episodic directing debut during the show’s final season. Over the course of the series’ six-season, 123-episode run, she became the only member of the production team to step behind the camera as a director.

Her directing work explores complex characters, emotional stakes, and themes that spark conversation. After Grimm wrapped, Julie wrote, produced, and directed 7AM Wednesday, a thriller exploring non-linear storytelling. She later wrote, produced, and directed the three-minute thriller A Close Call, which inspired her feature project Dangerous Assumptions, a finalist in the 2021 Lifetime/WrapWomen PitchFest.

Julie was hired by MarVista Entertainment to direct the feature film The Sintern, a Tubi Original shot on location in Arizona. She is attached to direct Unbridled Courage, a female-led period Western feature set in 1899 Texas, currently in active development, with Herlocker taking the screenplay into its next iteration.

A member of the Directors Guild of America, Herlocker is a graduate of the DGA’s DDI Mentorship Program, a participant in the Paramount Global Directing Initiative, and was selected for the inaugural 2024 Alliance of Women Directors Rising Director Fellowship. She continues to develop original projects through her Los Angeles-based production company, Shadow Art Entertainment.

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