Acclaimed filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, best known for the documentary "Super Size Me," has died at 53.
The New York Post confirmed his death on Thursday night, citing complications from cancer.
"It was a sad day, as we said goodbye to my brother Morgan,” his brother Craig Spurlock told the outlet. "Morgan gave so much through his art, ideas and generosity. Today the world has lost a true creative genius and a special man. I am so proud to have worked together with him."
Spurlock was born in 1970 in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and graduated from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 1993.
He began his career as a playwright, gaining recognition for his 1999 play "The Phoenix," which received awards at the New York Fringe Festival.
Before achieving widespread success, he also created and hosted the web series "Bet You Will." The show, which aired on MTV and Spike, offered contestants money to perform daring tasks, like consuming a full jar of mayonnaise.
In 2004, Spurlock rose to prominence with his documentary "Super Size Me," a film that documented his health transformation during a 30-day period of consuming only McDonald's food.
That same year, Spurlock received an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature and won the Best Director award at the Sundance Film Festival.
"There are great films that are out there that deal with food, [and] I think if there's a way I can help champion some of those other filmmakers, I'd rather do that than go into making another food movie," he told Civil Eats in 2010.
"For me, movies have to be something that if you don't [make them], then you are going to go crazy. If you don't tell this story, if you don't put it on a page, if you don't put it on film, then it is literally going to affect your brain from this moment forward," he continued. "There may be something that comes along that kind of strikes me in that way, and if it does, I'll have to tell it."
After "Super Size Me," Spurlock directed "Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?" in 2008, a film about his quest to find the terrorist and explore the impact of his actions on various countries.
Further, Spurlock worked on the 2010 film adaptation of "Freakonomics," based on the popular book.
On TV, he hosted the CNN series "Morgan Spurlock: Inside Man" from 2013 to 2016 and also created "30 Days" for FX from 2005 to 2008. In 2017, he released "Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!" exploring the fast-food industry's attempts to rebrand chicken dishes as healthier options.
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