Michael William Downey grew up on a farm in Granville, Ohio. During his youth he watched and recorded thousands of movie and wrote movie review guides for his classmates, and shared his favorite films with his younger brother, Jordan Downey, who is now a frequent collaborator.

At age 8 he knew he would be a writer, and in 1995 at 17, he won Ohio's Minnie Hite Moodie Writers award. He went onto Ohio University to study business and film. In 1999 his VHS, DVD, and laserdisc collection spanned over 1,500 movies, which he sold upon graduation from college to finance his move to Colorado where he attended graduate school at University of Denver. During this time in Colorado he worked with the Denver Newspaper Agency and produced sporting events, concerts, celebrity events, and music videos and contributed to the ThanksKilling franchise with brother Jordan, and cinematographer Kevin Stewart.

Upon moving to Hollywood, Michael honed his screenwriting and production skills picking up assignments and contributing to various projects. Recently, Michael worked as a co-producer with Scott Wiper, Vinnie Jones, Karri O' Reilly, Tarquin Pack, and many other accomplished filmmakers and professionals.

Michael has also published thousands of songs many of which have been on film and TV, and contributed creative efforts to businesses such as Modern Christmas Trees which was funded by Barbara Corcoran on Shark Tank.