Schwentke was born in Stuttgart, West Germany. He graduated from Los Angeles film school, Columbia College Hollywood (CCH), in 1992. His wife is an American.
He directed two feature films in Germany, the thriller Tattoo and the comedy Eierdiebe, the latter a semi-autobiographical film about a man being treated for testicular cancer, a disease he had been diagnosed with and survived himself in 1995.[1]
Although not intending to do Hollywood movies, he ended up doing so after having trouble financing a third German film.[2]
Schwentke directed the action-comedy crime film R.I.P.D., based on the comic book Rest in Peace Department by Peter M. Lenkov. The film starred Ryan Reynolds as Nick Walker[5] and Jeff Bridges as Roycephus Pulsipher.[6]R.I.P.D. was released on 19 July 2013 in the United States by Universal Pictures.[7] Schwentke said in 2018 that he regretted making R.I.P.D. due to differences with the studio and that he had never watched the final film, saying it "wasn't in the end what the studio wanted".[8] He directed The Divergent Series: Insurgent, the sequel to Divergent, which was released on 20 March 2015. He directed Part 1 of Allegiant, the two-part finale to the series, with a script by Noah Oppenheim.[9]