Scott Frank | |
---|---|
Born | Fort Walton Beach, Florida, U.S. | March 10, 1960
Education | University of California, Santa Barbara (BA) American Film Institute (MFA) |
Occupation(s) | Film director, producer, screenwriter, author |
A. Scott Frank (born March 10, 1960) 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. [1] In recent years, he has worked for Netflix on television miniseries, most prominently writing and directing Godless and The Queen's Gambit .
Frank was born to a Jewish family [2] in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, on March 10, 1960. [3] His family moved to Los Gatos, California where he attended high school while his father worked as a pilot for Pan Am. [4] He attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, graduating in 1982 with a Bachelor of Arts in film studies. [5] [6] [7]
While a student at the University of California, Frank first had the idea for what would become the script for Little Man Tate in 1981, thinking that, in the aftermath of the Iran hostage crisis that there was "a slight petulance to world events at the time" and envisioning "an eight year old who was making more sense of the world than Ted Koppel." [8] After graduation he worked as a bartender while attempting to sell the script, which eventually led to his hiring an agent, and subsequently being hired by Paramount Pictures in 1984. It would take several years before the script was made, with Frank's first produced screenwriting work in the meantime being the 1987 film Plain Clothes , which he would later describe as "terrible." Little Man Tate was ultimately made in 1991 as the directorial debut of actress Jodie Foster. [9]
In the years to follow, Frank's filmography included scripts for Dead Again , Malice , Heaven's Prisoners , and Get Shorty . The latter earned him his first award nominations with both the Writers Guild and the Golden Globes. [10] He credited the success of Get Shorty with reviving his interest in the job after a bad experience on Malice, and was particularly pleased as a longtime fan of Elmore Leonard's novels that he felt had not received satisfactory film adaptations previously. This success led to his being asked to work on another Elmore Leonard adaptation, Steven Soderbergh's 1998 film Out of Sight starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. The film was not a commercial success, but earned warm critical plaudits. [9] Frank won both the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Frank was recruited by Steven Spielberg to work on the script for Minority Report , a Philip K. Dick adaptation, which he would later say was "a very difficult screenplay to write because it was loaded with so much technical detail." [1] He performed second unit directing duties for one segment of the film, an area of filmmaking he had contemplated moving into for some time. [8] Minority Report earned him the Saturn Award for Best Writing and several other nominations, including for Hugo and Nebula awards. Other credits from this period included The Interpreter and Marley & Me, the latter described as a film he would not have imagined himself working on but which he developed "a big soft spot for." [1] By 2024, Frank had worked on nearly 60 films, including uncredited rewrites on films such as Saving Private Ryan , Entrapment , Dawn of the Dead , Night at the Museum and Gravity . [4] [1]
Frank made his directorial debut in 2007 on The Lookout , whose script he had begun in 1998 and which was originally meant to be directed by Sam Mendes, who eventually departed the project to make Road to Perdition while encouraging Frank to take on the task himself. [8] He had also attempted to recruit Sydney Pollack, the director of The Interpreter whom he considered a mentor, to direct the project. [1] He won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature for his work on the film. His second film as a director, 2014's A Walk Among the Tombstones , had a more mixed reception. In January 2016, Frank published his first novel, Shaker, a crime mystery published by Penguin Random House. [11] [12] [13] He also worked in the burgeoning superhero genre, making two films with director James Mangold, The Wolverine (2013) and Logan (2017). For the latter, he received his second Academy Award nomination. [9]
Having had previous experience working for network television, Frank had begun to develop Godless , previously intended as a film, into a miniseries for HBO. However, Netflix outbid HBO for the project, which Frank both wrote and directed. [9] The miniseries earned Frank numerous award nominations, including from the Directors Guild and three Primetime Emmy Awards. The success of Godless led Frank to pitch further projects to Netflix, several of which were rejected, until they expressed interest in The Queen's Gambit , an adaptation of a Walter Tevis novel that Frank had previously attempted to make as a film. [14] [15] Frank said that he viewed the novel as exploring "the cost of genius", a theme that he had first intended to explore in Little Man Tate but "didn't quite get there with it." [16]
Frank won the 2021 Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie.
Screenwriter
Year | Title | Director | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
1988 | Plain Clothes | Martha Coolidge | |
1991 | Dead Again | Kenneth Branagh | |
Little Man Tate | Jodie Foster | ||
The Walter Ego | John Putch | Short film | |
1993 | Malice | Harold Becker | |
1995 | Get Shorty | Barry Sonnenfeld | |
1996 | Heaven's Prisoners | Phil Joanou | |
1998 | Out of Sight | Steven Soderbergh | |
2002 | Minority Report | Steven Spielberg | |
2004 | Flight of the Phoenix | John Moore | |
2005 | The Interpreter | Sydney Pollack | |
2008 | Marley & Me | David Frankel | |
2013 | The Wolverine | James Mangold | |
2017 | Logan |
Director
Year | Title | Director | Writer | Notes | Ref |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2007 | The Lookout | Yes | Yes | ||
2014 | A Walk Among the Tombstones | Yes | Yes | ||
Producer
Year | Title | Director | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
2001 | The Caveman's Valentine | Kasi Lemmons | |
2022 | No Exit | Damien Power | |
Year | Title | Director | Writer | Executive producer | Creator | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1988 | The Wonder Years | No | Yes | No | No | Episode "The Phone Call" |
1993 | Fallen Angels | No | Yes | No | No | Episode "Dead End for Delia" |
1994 | Birdland | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Episodes "Pilot" and "Plan B" |
2004 | Karen Sisco | No | Yes | No | No | Episode "He Was a Friend of Mine" |
2011 | Shameless | Yes | No | No | No | Episode "It's Time to Kill the Turtle" |
2017 | Godless | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Miniseries |
2020 | The Queen's Gambit | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
2024 | Monsieur Spade | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
Danny Strong is an American actor, screenwriter, director, and producer. As an actor, Strong is best known for his roles as Jonathan Levinson in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Doyle McMaster in Gilmore Girls and Danny Siegel in Mad Men. He also wrote the screenplays for Recount, the HBO adaptation Game Change, Lee Daniels' The Butler, and co-wrote the two-part finale of The Hunger Games film trilogy, Mockingjay – Part 1 and Mockingjay – Part 2. Strong also is a co-creator, executive producer, director, and writer for the Fox series Empire and created, wrote and directed the award-winning Hulu miniseries Dopesick.
Charles Stuart Kaufman is an American screenwriter, film director, and novelist. He wrote the films Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation (2002), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). He both wrote and directed the films Synecdoche, New York (2008), Anomalisa (2015), and I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020). In 2020, Kaufman released his first novel, Antkind.
Thomas Brodie-Sangster is an English actor. He is known for playing Sam in Love Actually (2003), Simon in Nanny McPhee (2005), Ferb in Phineas and Ferb (2007–2015), Jojen Reed in Game of Thrones (2013–2014), Newt in the Maze Runner film series (2014–2018), and Benny Watts in the Netflix miniseries The Queen's Gambit (2020), for which he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie.
Phil Alden Robinson is an American film director and screenwriter whose films include Field of Dreams, Sneakers, and The Sum of All Fears.
David Friedman, known professionally as David Benioff, is an American writer and producer. Along with his collaborator D. B. Weiss, he is best known for co-creating Game of Thrones (2011–2019), the HBO adaptation of George R. R. Martin's series of books A Song of Ice and Fire. He also wrote 25th Hour (2002), Troy (2004), City of Thieves (2008) and co-wrote X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009).
Steven Ernest Bernard Zaillian is an American screenwriter, film director and producer. He won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA Award for his screenplay Schindler's List (1993) and has earned Oscar nominations for the films Awakenings, Gangs of New York, Moneyball and The Irishman. He was presented with the Distinguished Screenwriter Award at the 2009 Austin Film Festival and the Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement from the Writers Guild of America in 2011. Zaillian is the founder of Film Rites, a film production company.
Daniel Brett Weiss is an American television writer and producer. Along with his collaborator David Benioff, he is best-known for co-creating Game of Thrones (2011–2019), the HBO adaptation of George R. R. Martin's series of books A Song of Ice and Fire.
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.
Peter Julian Robin Morgan, is a British screenwriter and playwright. He has written for theatre, films and television, often writing about historical events or figures such as Queen Elizabeth II, whom he has covered extensively in all major media. He has received a number of accolades including five BAFTA Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, a Tony Award and a Laurence Olivier Award. In February 2017, Morgan was awarded a British Film Institute Fellowship.
Douglas Geoffrey McGrath was an American screenwriter, film director, and actor. He received various accolades, including nominations for an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Tony Award, and Primetime Emmy Award.
Allan Shiach, who writes and produces under the pseudonym Allan Scott, is a Scottish screenwriter and producer, and former Scotch whisky executive. He was nominated for BAFTA's Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film and two Genie Awards for his 1997 film Regeneration. He has won the Edgar Award (1976) and Writers' Guild Award (1978). He was executive producer and co-creator of the multi-award-winning Netflix series The Queen's Gambit, a longtime collaborator of Nicolas Roeg, including co-writing his films Don't Look Now and The Witches.
Michael Green is an American writer and producer. In addition to writing for television, Green has written or co-written several feature film screenplays, including Logan, Alien: Covenant, Blade Runner 2049 and Murder on the Orient Express, all released in 2017. For Logan, which he co-wrote with James Mangold and Scott Frank, Green was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Cary Joji Fukunaga is an American filmmaker. He is known for directing critically acclaimed films such as the thriller Sin nombre (2009), the period drama Jane Eyre (2011), the war drama Beasts of No Nation (2015) and the 25th James Bond film, No Time to Die (2021). He also co-wrote the Stephen King adaptation It (2017). He was the first director of East Asian descent to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series, as the director and executive producer of the first season of the HBO series True Detective (2014). He also directed and executive produced the Netflix limited series Maniac (2018), and executive produced and directed several episodes of the Apple TV+ miniseries Masters of the Air (2024).
Scott Eric Neustadter is an American screenwriter and producer. He often works with his writing partner, Michael H. Weber. The two writers are best known for writing the screenplay for the romantic comedy film 500 Days of Summer. The film is based on two real relationships Neustadter had. They also wrote the screenplays for the film adaptations of the novels The Spectacular Now, The Fault in Our Stars, and Paper Towns.
Michael H. Weber is an American screenwriter and producer. He and his writing partner, Scott Neustadter, are best known for writing the screenplay for the romantic comedy film 500 Days of Summer. The film is based on two real relationships Neustadter had. They also wrote the screenplays for the film adaptations of the novels The Spectacular Now, The Fault in Our Stars, and Paper Towns.
Bessie is a 2015 HBO TV film about the American blues singer Bessie Smith, and focuses on her transformation as a struggling young singer into "The Empress of the Blues". The film is directed by Dee Rees, with a screenplay by Rees, Christopher Cleveland and Bettina Gilois. Queen Latifah stars as Smith, and supporting roles are played by Michael Kenneth Williams as Smith's first husband Jack Gee, and Mo'Nique as Ma Rainey. The film premiered on May 16, 2015. By the following year Bessie was the most watched HBO original film in the network's history. The film was well received critically and garnered four Primetime Emmy Awards, winning for Outstanding Television Movie.
Carlos Rafael Rivera is an American composer based out of Guatemala. In 2014, his music score for the movie A Walk Among the Tombstones advanced for Oscar in the Best Original Score category. He has won an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award, and a Hollywood Music in Media Award for his work in Netflix miniseries The Queen's Gambit (2020) and received two additional Emmy nominations for his work in another Netflix miniseries Godless (2017).
The Queen's Gambit is a 2020 American coming-of-age period drama television miniseries based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Walter Tevis. The title refers to the "Queen's Gambit", a chess opening. The series was written and directed by Scott Frank, who created it with Allan Scott, who owns the rights to the book. Beginning in the mid-1950s and proceeding into the 1960s, the story follows the life of Beth Harmon, a fictional American chess prodigy on her rise to the top of the chess world while struggling with drug and alcohol dependency.
Elizabeth "Beth" Harmon is a fictional American character and the main protagonist in the Walter Tevis novel The Queen's Gambit and the Netflix drama miniseries of the same name, in which she is portrayed by Anya Taylor-Joy. Taylor-Joy's performance as Beth was critically acclaimed. She was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie. She also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie.
The Queen's Gambit: Music from the Netflix Limited Series is the soundtrack album to the period drama miniseries The Queen's Gambit, based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Walter Tevis. The original score composed by Carlos Rafael Rivera, known for his previous collaborations with the showrunner Scott Frank in A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014), and the miniseries Godless (2017). Following production on the latter, Frank pitched the one-liner from the source material for its television adaptation, in April 2018 and agreed to work on the musical score, with scoring began in August 2018. The series consisted of orchestral music, to focus on the "instrumental depth and color" for each episodes, progressing on Beth Harmon's life.