Joshua Butler is the son of Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Robert Olen Butler. Accepted into USC’s Cinema-Television directing program while still a junior in high school, he wrote and directed the student short “Will Work for Food”.[3] After graduation, Butler edited Paul Monette: The Brink of Summer’s End, which won the 1997 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for documentary.
Butler then began directing television drama series. He segued into film directing with Beer Money for the USA Network, and continued with Prancer Returns for producer Raffaella De Laurentiis and USA, and Sci Fi Pictures Clive Barker Presents Saint Sinner. Butler also served as co-executive producer of the ESPN telefilm A Season on the Brink.
He is a co-founder of Kinetic Pictures with former documentary producer and USC classmate Chet Fenster.
As a television editor, Butler worked on the series Surface, E-Ring, Men in Trees, Friday Night Lights, Life and Warehouse 13. As a television director, he directed episodes of The Invisible Man, G vs E and The Vampire Diaries.