A screenwriter is a writer who practices the craft of screenwriting, writing screenplays on which mass media, such as films, television programs, and video games, are based.
Robert Towne is an American screenwriter and director. He started with writing films for Roger Corman including The Tomb of Ligeia (1964). Later, he was a part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmaking. He wrote the Academy Award-winning original screenplay for Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974), which is widely considered one of the greatest screenplays. Towne also wrote the sequel, The Two Jakes (1990), and the Hal Ashby comedy-dramas The Last Detail (1973) and Shampoo (1975). He has collaborated with Tom Cruise on the films Days of Thunder (1990), The Firm (1993) and the first two installments of Mission: Impossible franchise.
A screenplay, or script, is a written work by screenwriters for a film, television show, or video game. A screenplay written for television is also known as a teleplay. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. A screenplay is a form of narration in which the movements, actions, expressions and dialogue of the characters are described in a certain format. Visual or cinematographic cues may be given, as well as scene descriptions and scene changes.
Jessica Ann Walter was an American actress who appeared in over 170 films, stage and television productions. In films, she was best known for her role as a psychotic and obsessed fan of a local disc jockey in the 1971 Clint Eastwood thriller, Play Misty for Me. On television, she was most recently known for her role of Lucille Bluth on the sitcom Arrested Development, and providing the voice of Malory Archer on the FX animated series Archer (2009–21). Walter received various awards over the course of her television career including a Primetime Emmy Award for Amy Prentiss (1975). She also received two Golden Globe Award nominations and three Screen Actors Guild Award nominations. For her starring role opposite Eastwood in Play Misty for Me, Walter received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama.
Screenwriting or scriptwriting is the art and craft of writing scripts for mass media such as feature films, television productions or video games. It is often a freelance profession.
William Froug was an American television writer and producer. His producing credits included the series The Twilight Zone, Gilligan's Island, and Bewitched. He was a writer for, among other shows, The Dick Powell Show, Charlie's Angels, and Adventures in Paradise. He authored numerous books on screenwriting, including Screenwriting Tricks of the Trade, Zen and the Art of Screenwriting I and II, The Screenwriter Looks at The Screenwriter, and How I Escaped from Gilligan's Island: Adventures of a Hollywood Writer-Producer, published in 2005 by the University of Wisconsin Press.
Walter Bernstein was an American screenwriter and film producer who was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studios in the 1950s because of his views on communism. Some of his notable works included The Front (1976), Yanks (1979), and Little Miss Marker (1980). He was a recipient of Writers Guild of America Awards including the Ian McLellan Hunter Award and the Evelyn F. Burkey Award.
A. Scott Frank is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and author. Frank has received two Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay for Out of Sight (1998) and Logan (2017). His film work, credited and uncredited, extends to dozens of films. In recent years, he has worked for Netflix on television miniseries, most prominently writing and directing The Queen's Gambit.
William Donald Payne was an American writer and producer. He wrote several episodes of The Simpsons after 2000, many of these with John Frink, whom he met while studying at the University of California, Los Angeles. The duo began their careers writing for the short-lived sitcom Hope and Gloria. Payne later moved into writing feature films, including My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006), and co-wrote Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), Thor (2011) and its sequel Thor: The Dark World (2013). Payne died from heart failure caused by bone cancer in March 2013.
Melissa Anne Rosenberg is an American television writer, television producer, and screenwriter. She has worked in both film and television and has won a Peabody Award. She has also been nominated for two Emmy Awards, and two Writers Guild of America Awards. Since joining the Writers Guild of America, she has been involved in its board of directors and was a strike captain during the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. She supports female screenwriters through the WGA Diversity Committee and co-founded the League of Hollywood Women Writers.
Dan Gordon is an Israeli-American screenwriter, television writer, television producer, television director, film producer, novelist, playwright, film director, and reserve duty captain in the Israel Defense Forces.
Dreams on Spec is a 2007 American documentary film that profiles the struggles and triumphs of emerging Hollywood screenwriters. It was written and directed by Daniel J. Snyder, who learned first-hand about the screenwriter's travails in the late 1980s when he was a teenager working alongside aspiring writer/directors Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary in the famed Video Archives video store in Manhattan Beach, California.
Janet Dulin Jones is an American screenwriter, playwright and producer.
Alfred Lewis Levitt was an American film and television screenwriter. He attended New York University, and served in a camera unit of the United States Air Force during the Second World War. Following the war, Levitt was the screenwriter for such films as The Boy with Green Hair (1948), Mrs. Mike (1950), and The Barefoot Mailman (1951).
Blake Snyder was an American screenwriter, consultant, author and educator based in Los Angeles. His screenplays include the comedies Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992) and Blank Check (1994).
Warren Lewis is an American film producer and screenwriter. He is best known for his screenwriting contributions on the films Black Rain and The 13th Warrior. He also worked as an assistant film director on numerous studio and independent films, including Boaz Davidson's Hospital Massacre (1982), Penelope Spheeris' The Boys Next Door (1985) and McTiernan's directorial debut film Nomads (1986). Lewis has an extensive background in film and video production.
Donald E. Stewart was an American screenwriter, best known for his screenplay for Missing, which won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, the Writers Guild of America Award, the London Film Critics' Circle award, a Christopher Award, (www.christophers.org) and the BAFTA Award for Best Screenplay, all shared with the film's director, Costa-Gavras.
Charles Randolph is an American screenwriter and producer for film and television. In 2015, he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay along with Adam McKay for co-writing The Big Short. In 2019, he wrote and produced the film Bombshell, which was directed by Jay Roach and starred Charlize Theron, Margot Robbie, and Nicole Kidman.
Ken Nolan is an American screenwriter and novelist best known for adapting the 2001 biographical war film Black Hawk Down from the non-fiction book of the same name.
Eric Pearson is an American screenwriter. He has worked with Marvel Studios, writing various short films for their Marvel One-Shots series of films, and writing the screenplay for the feature films Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Black Widow (2021), Godzilla vs. Kong (2021), and Thunderbolts (2025).
