Bekmambetov was born on June 25, 1961 in Guryev, Kazakh SSR, USSR (now Atyrau, Kazakhstan) and is ethnic Kazakh. At the age of 19, he moved to Tashkent, then-Soviet Union where in 1987 he graduated from the A. N. Ostrovsky Theatrical and Artistic Institute. After serving in the army, he started his career with movie director Viktor Verzhbitsky, who later became Bekmambetov's closest colleague and played in almost all of the movies directed by him.
In 2004, Timur Bekmambetov directed "Night Watch" ("Nochnoi Dozor"), a popular Russian fantasy film based on the book by Sergey Lukyanenko. He also directed the Roger Corman-produced remake of the 1974 film "The Arena" in 2001, also titled "The Arena" starring Karen McDougal and Lisa Dergan. He shows a common soldier's view in the film "Peshavar Waltz" aka Escape from Afghanistan (1994) that was released by Corman with an English language soundtrack as a direct-to-video production in 2002.
Bekmambetov's "Wanted" was released on June 27, 2008 in the US. The film, Bekmambetov's Hollywood debut, is based upon a comic-book miniseries of the same name written by Mark Millar. The film "9", produced by Timur and Tim Burton, will be released on September 9, 2009. Twilight Watch, the third of the Night Watch series, is expected in 2009. Timur also informed that the screenplay for the sequel of Wanted is complete and production will begin shortly.
