 |
Ronald Shusett | |
|---|---|
| Born | June 1935 (age 89) Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Occupations |
|
| Years active | 1974–present |
| Spouse | Linda Turley |
Ronald Shusett (born June 1935) is an American screenwriter and film producer, best known for his works in the science fiction and horror film genres. Along with co-writer Dan O'Bannon, he is the creator of Alien film franchise. [1]
Shusett was born to a Jewish family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but raised in Los Angeles from the age of 3. [2] His brother, Gary Shusett, is the founder of the Sherwood Oaks Film School. Shusett studied drama at the University of California, Los Angeles, and initially worked as a playwright. He cites Alfred Hitchcock as a major inspiration. [1]
In 1974, Shusett's psychological thriller screenplay W was produced by Bing Crosby Productions into a film directed by Richard Quine and starring Twiggy. That same year, Shusett optioned the Philip K. Dick short story, "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale", that became the basis of the film Total Recall .
It was during this time he met his writing partner Dan O'Bannon, after being impressed by his student film Dark Star. The two wrote several spec scripts, with the one entitled Star Beast eventually evolving into Alien (1979). The final script was heavily re-written by producers Walter Hill and David Giler, but in the end Dan O'Bannon received sole screenwriting credit, while O'Bannon and Shusett shared story credit.
Off the success of Alien, Shusett wrote or co-wrote the horror films Phobia (1980), Dead & Buried (1981), and The Final Terror (1983). During the decade, he formed a new writing partnership with Steven Pressfield. [3] Together they wrote the monster adventure film King Kong Lives (1986), the Steven Seagal film Above the Law (1988), and the sci-fi action film Freejack (1992). They were uncredited script doctors on Seagal's next film Hard to Kill (1990). [4]
Shusett (with Dan O'Bannon) was the writer and producer of the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger film Total Recall , a project he had begun 16 years prior. [1] He began writing a sequel film, based on Philip K. Dick's short story "The Minority Report," which would eventually become the standalone 2002 film Minority Report. Shusett received an executive-producer credit.
Shusett and O'Bannon received story credits for Alien vs. Predator, as the film incorporated unused elements from their original 1979 screenplay. [5] [6] He likewise received a story credit for the 2012 remake of Total Recall.
| Year | Title | Writer | Producer | Director | Other notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1974 | W | Story | No | Richard Quine | |
| 1979 | Alien | Story | Executive | Ridley Scott | |
| 1980 | Phobia | Story | No | John Huston | |
| 1981 | Dead & Buried | Yes | Yes | Gary Sherman | |
| 1983 | The Final Terror | Yes | No | Andrew Davis | |
| 1986 | King Kong Lives | Yes | Executive | John Guillermin | |
| 1988 | Above the Law | Yes | No | Andrew Davis | |
| 1990 | Total Recall | Yes | Yes | Paul Verhoeven | |
| Hard to Kill | Rewrites | No | Bruce Malmuth | Uncredited revisions [4] | |
| 1992 | Alien 3 | Characters | No | David Fincher | |
| Freejack | Yes | Yes | Geoff Murphy | ||
| 1997 | Bleeders | Yes | No | Peter Svatek | |
| Alien Resurrection | Characters | No | Jean-Pierre Jeunet | ||
| 2002 | Minority Report | No | Executive | Steven Spielberg | |
| 2004 | Alien vs. Predator | Story | No | Paul W. S. Anderson | |
| 2007 | Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem | Characters | No | Greg Strause Colin Strause | |
| 2012 | Total Recall | Story | No | Len Wiseman | |
| 2012 | Prometheus | Characters | No | Ridley Scott | |
| 2017 | Alien: Covenant | Characters | No | ||
| 2024 | Alien: Romulus | Characters | No | Fede Álvarez |
Total Recall is a 1990 American science fiction action film directed by Paul Verhoeven, with a screenplay by Ronald Shusett, Dan O'Bannon, and Gary Goldman. The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone, Ronny Cox, and Michael Ironside. Based on the 1966 short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick, Total Recall tells the story of Douglas Quaid (Schwarzenegger), a construction worker who receives an implanted memory of a fantastical adventure on Mars. He subsequently finds his adventure occurring in reality as agents of a shadow organization try to prevent him from recovering memories of his past as a Martian secret agent aiming to stop the tyrannical regime of Martian dictator Vilos Cohaagen (Cox).
Rockne S. O'Bannon is an American television writer, screenwriter and producer, working primarily in the science fiction genre. O'Bannon has created five original television series.
The xenomorph is a fictional endoparasitoid extraterrestrial species that serves as the titular main antagonist of the Alien and Alien vs. Predator franchises.
My Stepmother Is an Alien is a 1988 American science fiction comedy film directed by Richard Benjamin. It stars Dan Aykroyd, Kim Basinger, Jon Lovitz, and Alyson Hannigan. The film follows the story of Celeste, an extraterrestrial woman who is sent on a secret mission to Earth, after her home planet's gravity is mistakenly disrupted by Steven Mills, a widowed scientist raising his daughter Jessie as a single father. The film was the film debut of Juliette Lewis.
Alien vs. Predator is a 2004 science fiction action horror film written and directed by Paul W. S. Anderson, and starring Sanaa Lathan, Raoul Bova, Lance Henriksen, Ewen Bremner, Colin Salmon, and Tommy Flanagan. It is the first film installment of the Alien vs. Predator franchise, the fifth film in the Alien franchise and third film of the Predator franchise, adapting a crossover bringing together the eponymous creatures of the Alien and Predator series, a concept which originated in a 1989 comic book written by Randy Stradley and Chris Warner. Anderson wrote the story, with the creators of the Alien franchise, Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett receiving additional story credit due to the incorporation of elements from the Alien series, and Anderson and Shane Salerno adapted the story into a screenplay. Their writing was influenced by Aztec mythology, the comic book series, and the writings of Erich von Däniken. In the film, scientists are caught in the crossfire of an ancient battle between Aliens and Predators as they attempt to escape a bygone pyramid.
Screamers is a 1995 Canadian-American-Japanese science fiction horror film starring Peter Weller, Roy Dupuis, and Jennifer Rubin, and directed by Christian Duguay. The screenplay, written by Dan O'Bannon with a rewrite by Miguel Tejada-Flores, is based on Philip K. Dick's 1953 short story "Second Variety", and addresses themes commonly found in that author's work: societal conflict, confusion of reality and illusion, and machines turning upon their creators. The film received generally negative response from critics at the time of its release. A sequel Screamers: The Hunting, was released in 2009, to mixed reviews.
Daniel Thomas O'Bannon was an American film screenwriter, director and visual effects supervisor, most closely associated in the science fiction and horror genres.
Dark Star is a 1974 American independent science fiction comedy film produced, scored and directed by John Carpenter and co-written with Dan O'Bannon. It follows the crew of the deteriorating starship Dark Star, twenty years into their mission to destroy unstable planets that might threaten future colonization of other planets.
Philip Yordan was an American screenwriter, film producer, novelist and playwright. He was a three-time Academy Award nominee, winning Best Story for Broken Lance (1954).
Philip Ives Dunne was an American screenwriter, film director and producer, who worked prolifically from 1932 until 1965. He spent the majority of his career at 20th Century Fox. He crafted well regarded romantic and historical dramas, usually adapted from another medium. Dunne was a leading Screen Writers Guild organizer and was politically active during the "Hollywood Blacklist" episode of the 1940s–1950s. He is best known for the films How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), The Robe (1953) and The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965).
Wesley Strick is an American screenwriter who has written such films as Arachnophobia, Wolf and Martin Scorsese's remake of Cape Fear. Since 2015, Strick has worked as a writer/executive producer on The Man in the High Castle.
Gary Leon Goldman is an American screenwriter. His film credits include Big Trouble in Little China (1986), Total Recall (1990) and Navy SEALs (1990).
Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens are a New York Times-bestselling husband-and-wife writing/producing team. In June, 2013, at the Constellation Awards ceremony in Toronto, the writing couple were honored with the Constellation Award for "Outstanding Canadian Contribution to Science Fiction Film or Television" for their role in creating the series, Primeval: New World.
Dead & Buried is a 1981 American horror film directed by Gary Sherman, starring Melody Anderson, Jack Albertson, and James Farentino. It is Albertson's final live-action film role before his death six months after the film's release. The film focuses on a small town wherein a few tourists are murdered, but their corpses begin to reanimate. With a screenplay written by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, the film was initially banned as a "video nasty" in the U.K. in the early 1980s, but was later acquitted of obscenity charges and removed from the Director of Public Prosecutions' list.
David Kevin Giler was an American filmmaker who had been active in the film industry since the early 1960s.
Alien is a 1979 science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott and written by Dan O'Bannon, based on a story by O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett. It follows a spaceship crew who investigate a derelict spaceship and are hunted by a deadly extraterrestrial creature. The film stars Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, and Yaphet Kotto. It was produced by Gordon Carroll, David Giler, and Walter Hill through their company Brandywine Productions and was distributed by 20th Century-Fox. Giler and Hill revised and made additions to the script; Shusett was the executive producer. The alien creatures and environments were designed by the Swiss artist H. R. Giger, while the concept artists Ron Cobb and Chris Foss designed the other sets.
Total Recall is a 2012 American science fiction action film directed by Len Wiseman from a screenplay by Kurt Wimmer and Mark Bomback, based on a story conceived by Wimmer, Ronald Shusett, Dan O'Bannon, and Jon Povill. It stars Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel. The film serves as a remake of the 1990 film of the same name, which is inspired by the 1966 short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick. The supporting cast features Bryan Cranston, Bokeem Woodbine, John Cho, and Bill Nighy. Unlike the original film, the setting is on a futuristic Earth, not Mars.
John Michael Fasano was an American screenwriter, film producer and director.
John Penney is an American film producer, screenwriter and director who has been working in the horror genre for over thirty years. He has created material for, and been involved in, a range of subgenres, including zombie movies, classic Creature Features (Amphibious), and supernatural thrillers (Hellgate).
The following is a list of unproduced Tobe Hooper projects in roughly chronological order. Over the course of his career, American film director Tobe Hooper had worked on a number of projects which never progressed beyond the pre-production stage under his direction. Some of these projects fell into "development hell" or were officially cancelled, while others were taken over and completed by other filmmakers.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Other | |
   | This article about an American screenwriter born in the 1930s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
