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New Zealand-born screenwriter-director Andrew Niccol began his career in London, successfully directing TV commercials before moving to Los Angeles in order to make films "longer than 60 seconds." He interested high-powered producer Scott Rudin in his The Truman Show (1998) script, but Rudin was not willing to gamble on a rookie director, particularly when Jim Carrey came aboard, swelling the budget to about $60 million. Peter Weir helmed instead, bringing a complementary vision which lightened the material somewhat, and the clever satire, which followed a cheerful insurance man (Carrey) as he slowly realizes that all the people in his life are just actors in a TV show, opened to critical raves. Since the deal for "Truman" came together slowly, Niccol actually made his screenwriting and directing debut with Gattaca (1997) (1997), a superb, well-acted sci-fi movie that raised issues of genetic engineering in a totalitarian environment.- Writer
- Actor
- Editorial Department
- Producer
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Victor Levin was born in 1961. Victor is a producer and writer, known for Mad About You (1992), 5 to 7 (2014) and Destination Wedding (2018).- Producer
- Director
- Writer
J.C. Chandor is known for A Most Violent Year (2014), Margin Call (2011) and All Is Lost (2013). He has been married to Mary Cameron Goodyear since 2004. They have two children.- Producer
- Director
- Cinematographer
Nikolaus Geyrhalter was born in 1972 in Vienna, Austria. He is a producer and director, known for Earth (2019), Over the Years (2015) and Our Daily Bread (2005).- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Tony Gilroy was born in Manhattan, New York, New York, USA; and raised in upstate New York. His father, Frank D. Gilroy, was a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, director, and screenwriter. Tony has penned many films, including The Devil's Advocate (1997) and The Cutting Edge (1992).- Writer
- Director
- Producer
Dan Gilroy was born in Santa Monica, California, the son of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Frank D. Gilroy, and sculptor and writer Ruth Dorothy. His brother Tony Gilroy is a screenwriter and director; and his fraternal twin brother, John Gilroy, is a film editor. Through his father, he is of Italian, Irish and German descent.
Gilroy wrote the script for 2005 gambling drama Two for the Money (2005), starring Al Pacino and Gilroy's wife Rene Russo. His earliest credit is as co-writer of science fiction thriller Freejack (1992), followed by co-writing Dennis Hopper-directed comedy Chasers. He was also one of the writers to contribute to the unmade Superman film Superman Lives.
He made his directorial debut with the 2014 crime thriller Nightcrawler (2014). He also wrote the screenplay, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Gilroy has been married to Rene Russo since 1992, and they have one daughter, named Rose. They reside in Brentwood, California.- Writer
- Producer
Laura Eason is Brooklyn-based producer, screenwriter and playwright. Credits for TV include serving as showrunner / executive producer of the forthcoming new drama series THREE WOMEN; the Showtime drama THE LOUDEST VOICE (WGA nomination) and four seasons of Netflix's five-time Emmy-nominated best drama series HOUSE OF CARDS (Emmy and WGA nominations.) Laura's feature film debut, HERE AND NOW, produced by and starring Sarah Jessica Parker, premiered at Tribeca Film Festival (then titled BLUE NIGHT) and is available on demand. An award-winning playwright, her more than twenty produced plays and adaptations include the original SEX WITH STRANGERS (over 100 productions in the US and around the world) and an adaptation of Jules Verne's AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS which began under her direction in Chicago (seven Jeff Award nominations including Best Production and Best Adaptation) and went onto subsequent productions before transferring to the New Victory Theatre in NYC. Her plays are published by Nick Hern Books, Overlook Press, DPS & Broadway Play Publishing. Laura is the former Artistic Director of Lookingglass Theatre Company in Chicago (Regional Theatre Tony Award) and is still a proud ensemble member. lauraeason.com- Writer
- Producer
Zak Olkewicz was born on 19 December 1983 in Los Angeles County, California, USA. Zak is a writer and producer, known for Bullet Train (2022), Fear Street: Part Two - 1978 (2021) and Lights Out (2016). Zak is married to Katrina Rennells. They have one child.- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Luc Besson spent the first years of his life following his parents, scuba diving instructors, around the world. His early life was entirely aquatic. He already showed amazing creativity as a youth, writing early drafts of The Big Blue (1988) and The Fifth Element (1997), as an adolescent bored in school. He planned on becoming a marine biologist specializing in dolphins until a diving accident at age 17 which rendered him unable to dive any longer. He moved back to Paris, where he was born, and only at age 18 did he first have an urban life or television. He realized that film was a medium which he could combine all his interests in various arts together, so he began taking odd jobs on various films. He moved to America for three years, then returned to France and formed Les Films de Loups - his own production company, which later changed its name to Les Films de Dauphins. He is now able to dive again.- Writer
- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
After training as a painter (he storyboards his films as full-scale paintings), Kurosawa entered the film industry in 1936 as an assistant director, eventually making his directorial debut with Sanshiro Sugata (1943). Within a few years, Kurosawa had achieved sufficient stature to allow him greater creative freedom. Drunken Angel (1948) was the first film he made without extensive studio interference, and marked his first collaboration with Toshirô Mifune. In the coming decades, the two would make 16 movies together, and Mifune became as closely associated with Kurosawa's films as was John Wayne with the films of Kurosawa's idol, John Ford. After working in a wide range of genres, Kurosawa made his international breakthrough film Rashomon (1950) in 1950. It won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, and first revealed the richness of Japanese cinema to the West. The next few years saw the low-key, touching Ikiru (1952) (Living), the epic Seven Samurai (1954), the barbaric, riveting Shakespeare adaptation Throne of Blood (1957), and a fun pair of samurai comedies Yojimbo (1961) and Sanjuro (1962). After a lean period in the late 1960s and early 1970s, though, Kurosawa attempted suicide. He survived, and made a small, personal, low-budget picture with Dodes'ka-den (1970), a larger-scale Russian co-production Dersu Uzala (1975) and, with the help of admirers Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, the samurai tale Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior (1980), which Kurosawa described as a dry run for Ran (1985), an epic adaptation of Shakespeare's "King Lear." He continued to work into his eighties with the more personal Dreams (1990), Rhapsody in August (1991) and Madadayo (1993). Kurosawa's films have always been more popular in the West than in his native Japan, where critics have viewed his adaptations of Western genres and authors (William Shakespeare, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Maxim Gorky and Evan Hunter) with suspicion - but he's revered by American and European film-makers, who remade Rashomon (1950) as The Outrage (1964), Seven Samurai (1954), as The Magnificent Seven (1960), Yojimbo (1961), as A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and The Hidden Fortress (1958), as Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977).- Writer
- Actor
- Director
A bright child, John Sayles began reading novels before age 9. A Williams College grad in 1972, he shunned a corporate career to work various blue-collar jobs, moving to east Boston to take a factory job. He wrote stories and submitted them to various magazines, and the Atlantic Monthly gave him the idea of publishing them in a novel--thus "Pride of the Bimbos" (1975) was born.
In the late 1970s he worked for renowned low-budget producer Roger Corman as a screenwriter. He saved much of the money he earned from that job, got some friends together and made Return of the Secaucus Seven (1980) in 25 days. Altough it was a hit, he had trouble obtaining financing for the films he wanted to make because he would not give up his right of final cut. Baby It's You (1983) was Sayles' only film made under studio control.
In 1983 the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship granted him a tax-free income of $32,000 a year for 5 years. That stipend and money he earned for writing such films as The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986), Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (1983) and Breaking In (1989) enabled him to make the kinds of films he wanted to make. Lone Star (1996) placed Sayles in the ranks of top American filmmakers. In it and his other films, a broadly appealing social consciousness emerges, showing Sayles to be concerned with what's going on with regional cultures, national values and what living in the US is like today.
Sayles and Maggie Renzi, whom he met during college, have lived together since the 1970s, splitting their time between a Hoboken, NJ, house and a farm in upstate New York. They have no plans to marry.- Producer
- Writer
- Music Department
Born November 9, 1965 in Indianapolis, Indiana, US as Ryan Patrick Murphy, he is an American writer, director, and producer, responsible for creating such hits as Nip/Tuck (2003), Glee (2009) and American Horror Story (2011). His mother, J. Andy Murphy, was a writer and communications worker and his father was a circulation director in the newspaper industry. He has one brother. He attended a Catholic school till the eighth grade and graduated from Warren Central High School. He went on to study journalism at the Indiana University Bloomington, where he was also a member of a vocal ensemble, and went on to intern in the style section of the The Washington Post in 1986. In 1990 he got into screenwriting, but only in 1999 was his first story produced: it was Popular (1999), a teen comedy show, which he co-created with Gina Matthews and which run for two seasons. In 2003 he created Nip/Tuck (2003), which brought him his first Emmy nomination. He won the award six years later, when in 2009 he directed the pilot of his hit series Glee (2009) which he co-created with Ian Brennan and Brad Falchuk. In 2011 he and Falchuk co-crated another highly popular series, American Horror Story (2011). in 2015 he was awarded the Award for Inspiration from amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research. In 2018 Murphy signed a five-year $300 million development deal with Netflix. He is a pan equal opportunities activist, both through his movies and television projects which very often focus on the LGBTQ+ community, and as a creator of the Half Initiative, which aims at making Hollywood more inclusive for women and minorities. He's been married to photographer David Miller since 2012. They have three sons, Logan Phineas, Ford, and Griffin Sullivan.- Writer
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- Director
Brad Falchuk was born on 1 March 1971 in Newton, Massachusetts, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for Glee (2009), American Horror Story (2011) and Pose (2018). He has been married to Gwyneth Paltrow since 29 September 2018. He was previously married to Suzanne Bukinik.- Writer
- Producer
- Actor
Ian Brennan was born on 23 April 1978 in Mount Prospect, Illinois, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for Glee (2009), Monster (2022) and Cooties (2014). He has been married to Trilby Glover since 4 September 2016. They have two children.- Writer
- Director
- Producer
Adam Rifkin is a Writer/Director whose eclectic career ranges from broad family comedies to cult classics to dark and gritty dramas. Most recently, Rifkin Wrote and Directed THE LAST MOVIE STAR, a poignant drama starring Burt Reynolds, Ariel Winter and Chevy Chase. The critically acclaimed film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival where it was bought and released by A24. Rifkin also Directed DIRECTOR'S CUT, a wild and twisted meta-thriller penned by iconic illusionist and comedian, Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller. DIRECTOR'S CUT was the opening night film of the 2016 Slamdance Film Festival and was released by Epic Pictures under their new, DREAD CENTRAL PRESENTS, horror banner. Additionally, Rifkin Directed GIUSEPPE MAKES A MOVIE, an outrageous yet touching documentary about trailer park filmmaker Giuseppe Andrews and the misfit family of homeless people he's assembled to perform in all of his bizarre yet heartfelt movies. GIUSEPPE MAKES A MOVIE holds a coveted 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Previously, Rifkin Wrote and Directed the award winning film LOOK, a controversial drama that takes us into the foreboding world of surveillance and explores the conceit that the average American is captured on camera at least 300 times a day. Adam also Executive Produced LOOK: The Series for Showtime. The stand alone limited series enjoyed the highest ratings in its time slot in Showtime's history. Rifkin earned cult status when his film THE DARK BACKWARD was named one of the top ten films of its year by The New York Post. He would then be immortalized as the director responsible for New Line Cinema's DETROIT ROCK CITY, a bona fide cult classic that continues to speak to and inspire generations of rock fans around the world. Rifkin gained critical recognition for NIGHT AT THE GOLDEN EAGLE. The dark drama was an official selection of the London Film Festival and opened to rave reviews. An A-list screenwriter, Rifkin has a penchant for family fare. He wrote UNDERDOG for Walt Disney Studios, a tent pole comedy based on the iconic 1960's cartoon show, ZOOM, starring Tim Allen and two hits for DreamWorks, MOUSEHUNT and SMALL SOLDIERS. His next foray into family entertainment will be PEEPS, a Lego Movie-esque animated feature he'll write and produce based on the icon PEEPS candies.- Producer
- Writer
- Director
Damien Sayre Chazelle is an American director and screenwriter. He was born in Providence, Rhode Island. His mother, Celia Sayre (Martin) Chazelle, is an American-Canadian writer and professor of history at The College of New Jersey. His father, Bernard Chazelle, is a French-American Eugene Higgins Professor of computer science at Princeton University, originally from Clamart, France. Chazelle has a sister, Anna, who is an actress and circus performer.- Writer
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- Director
Jonathan Tropper was born on 19 February 1970 in Riverdale, Bronx, New York City, New York, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for Banshee (2013), The Adam Project (2022) and This Is Where I Leave You (2014). He has been married to Stephanie Abram since 13 November 2016. They have one child. He was previously married to Elizabeth A. Parker.- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Born in 1947 in Chicago, he was educated at Goddard College, in Vermont, and studied drama at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse, before returning to Chicago and establishing the St Nicholas Theatre Company in 1972. He remained their resident writer for four years. The first of his plays to secure international recognition was 'Sexual Perversity in Chicago' (1974) and 'American Buffalo' (1975). The latter was eventually performed by Al Pacino on Broadway and London's West End earning him an 'Award Obie' when it transferred from Chicago to New York. His play 'Glengarry Glen Ross' won the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. His other plays include 'A Life in the Theatre' (1977). 'Edmond' (1982). 'The Shawl' (1985) and 'Speed the Plow' (1988). The rejection of his screen adaption of 'Sexual Perversity in Chicago' was completely rewritten and released as 'About Last Night in 1986. He soon attracted wide acclaim as a screenwriter when his version of 'The Postman Always Rings Twice' (1981) was made by Bob Rafelson and his original screenplay for 'The Verdict (1982) was nominated for an Oscar. Subsequent screenplays include 'The Untouchables' (1987), 'We're No Angels' (1990), 'Glengarry Glen Ross' (1992). He then wrote and directed 'House of Games' (1987), 'Things Change' (1988) and 'Homicide' (1991). He's also published two collections of essays 'Writing in Restaurants' (1986) and Some Freaks' (1989). In 1987, he conducted a series of classes at Columbia University Film School which were put into print as 'On Directing Film' (1992).- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Bong Joon-ho is a South Korean filmmaker. The recipient of three Academy Awards, his filmography is characterized by emphasis on social themes, genre-mixing, black humor, and sudden tone shifts. He first became known to audiences and achieved a cult following with his directorial debut film, the black comedy Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000), before achieving both critical and commercial success with his subsequent films: the crime thriller Memories of Murder (2003), the monster film The Host (2006), the science fiction action film Snowpiercer (2013), and the black comedy thriller Parasite (2019), all of which are among the highest-grossing films in South Korea, with Parasite also being the highest-grossing South Korean film in history.
All of Bong's films have been South Korean productions, although both Snowpiercer and Okja (2017) are mostly in the English language. Two of his films have screened in competition at the Cannes Film Festival-Okja in 2017 and Parasite in 2019; the latter earned the Palme d'Or, which was a first for a South Korean film. Parasite also became the first South Korean film to receive Academy Award nominations, with Bong winning Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay, making Parasite the first film not in English to win Best Picture. In 2017, Bong was included on Metacritic's list of the 25 best film directors of the 21st century. In 2020, Bong was included in Time's annual list of 100 Most Influential People and Bloomberg 50.- Writer
- Producer
- Script and Continuity Department
Brad Ingelsby is known for Mare of Easttown (2021), Run All Night (2015) and Out of the Furnace (2013).- Writer
- Producer
- Script and Continuity Department
John Logan was a playwright in Chicago for ten years before writing, on spec, his first screenplay, "Any Given Sunday." He won the 2010 Tony, Drama Desk, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle awards for his play RED, which premiered at the Donmar Warehouse in London and the Golden Theatre on Broadway.- Writer
- Producer
- Actor
Taylor Sheridan is an American actor, screenwriter and director. He is best known for writing the screenplay for 'Sicario' (2015) and 'Hell or high water' (2016), for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
He also starred in the FX television series 'Sons of anarchy' and directed the film 'Wind river,' starring Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen.- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Dwayne Johnson-Cochran is a writer, producer, director, and educator based in Los Angeles.
Born and raised in Chicago, Johnson-Cochran trained as a geologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He found his true calling as a filmmaker and was accepted into the MFA program at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago where he learned filmmaking and film history. After working as a journalist and cameraman for local newspapers and television stations, he found a position as a writer/producer with Burrell Advertising producing numerous commercials and short films. A few years later, Johnson-Cochran joined the local PBS station WTTW-Chicago producing, writing, and directing documentaries including "Going Home to Gospel with Patti LaBelle (producer), "Babies at Risk", on infant mortality in Chicago (producer) and "School Reform-Power to the Parents", (associate producer) along with the nightly news show 'Chicago Tonight.'
With the award-winning novelist An Chee Min (Red Azala, Katherine), Mr. Johnson- Cochran was invited to The People's Republic of China to create and produce "Stories from America," a 20-part television series, focused on the lives of Chinese-American students, scholars, and professionals living and working in the United States returning home for the first time.
Johnson-Cochran transitioned into screenwriting and moved to Los Angeles after his very first spec screenplay 'My Tribe is Lost' sold to Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks. Johnson-Cochran is the co-creator of NBC hit series "Minor Adjustments" and also wrote and produced on "Angel Street", executive produced by John Wells. Johnson-Cochran's directing debut, "Love and Action in Chicago" (HBO) featured Kathleen Turner, Courtney B.Vance, Jason Alexander, Regina King, and Ed Asner remains in rotation on HBO. The film has sold to sixty countries around the world. He continues to write screenplays and documentaries through his company Johnson-Cochran Films.
Johnson-Cochran's documentary 'Story of a Village', starring actress/producer Regina King, is in film festivals. The film 'Side by Side', a documentary about the 50/50 group of Sierra Leone, executive produced by former Secretary of State Madeline K. Albright is on National Democratic Institutes' YouTube channel.
His latest documentary "Be Known", about jazz percussionist Kahil El-Zabar, executive produced by Angela Bassett and Courtney B. Vance, was widely released in 2016.
Mr. Johnson-Cochran taught screenwriting for eleven years as an instructor at USC's Guy Hanks and Marvin Miller Screenwriting Fellowship. His passion for teaching took him to UNESCO as a lecturer/trainer, concentrating on screenwriting, directing, and documentary film making throughout Asia, Africa, and Europe. In 2012-13, he also taught a month-long screenwriting workshop in Kenya, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and Russia.
Johnson-Cochran, committed to giving back to the Los Angeles community, was twice recognized as the 'Mentor of the Year" for the Fulfillment Fund of Los Angeles. He also lent his creative services to lift up racial and social justice issues in collaboration with Oxfam, Save the Children, the National Democratic Institute, and Doctor's without Borders.
In 2016, his documentary, "Be Known," was nominated by the Black Reel Awards for Best Independent Documentary. "White Water," produced by Dwayne Johnson-Cochran was also nominated for two NAACP Image Awards for Best Screenplay and Director.
In 2019, Johnson-Cochran collaborated with Kanye West to create the libretto and book for "Nebuchadnezzar, a Kanye West Opera," which premiered in Los Angeles at the Hollywood Bowl.- Writer
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- Director
Scott Frank was born on 10 March 1960 in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for Logan (2017), Out of Sight (1998) and The Lookout (2007).- Writer
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- Producer
Richard Wenk was born in 1956 in Metuchen, New Jersey, USA. He is a writer and director, known for The Equalizer (2014), The Equalizer 3 (2023) and The Expendables 2 (2012).- Writer
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- Producer
Originally planning to become a lawyer, Billy Wilder abandoned that career in favor of working as a reporter for a Viennese newspaper, using this experience to move to Berlin, where he worked for the city's largest tabloid. He broke into films as a screenwriter in 1929 and wrote scripts for many German films until Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. Wilder immediately realized his Jewish ancestry would cause problems, so he emigrated to Paris, then the US. Although he spoke no English when he arrived in Hollywood, Wilder was a fast learner and thanks to contacts such as Peter Lorre (with whom he shared an apartment), he was able to break into American films. His partnership with Charles Brackett started in 1938 and the team was responsible for writing some of Hollywood's classic comedies, including Ninotchka (1939) and Ball of Fire (1941). The partnership expanded into a producer-director one in 1942, with Brackett producing and the two turned out such classics as Five Graves to Cairo (1943), The Lost Weekend (1945) (Oscars for Best Picture, Director and Screenplay) and Sunset Boulevard (1950) (Oscars for Best Screenplay), after which the partnership dissolved. (Wilder had already made one film, Double Indemnity (1944) without Brackett, as the latter had refused to work on a film he felt dealt with such disreputable characters.) Wilder's subsequent self-produced films would become more caustic and cynical, notably Ace in the Hole (1951), though he also produced such sublime comedies as Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Apartment (1960) (which won him Best Picture and Director Oscars). He retired in 1981.- Writer
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William Monahan was born on 3 November 1960 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for The Departed (2006), London Boulevard (2010) and Kingdom of Heaven (2005).- Writer
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- Producer
John Lee Hancock was born on 15 December 1956 in Longview, Texas, USA. He is a writer and director, known for The Blind Side (2009), Saving Mr. Banks (2013) and The Highwaymen (2019).- Writer
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- Actor
Eric Warren Singer is known for American Hustle (2013), Top Gun: Maverick (2022) and Only the Brave (2017).