James V. Hart | |
|---|---|
 Hart in 2011 | |
| Born | 1950 (age 73–74) Fort Worth, Texas, U.S. |
| Occupation |
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| Years active | 1984–present |
| Spouse | Judith Nugent |
| Children | 2; including Julia Hart |
James V. Hart (born 1950) is an American screenwriter and author. He is known for his literary adaptations, such as Hook (1991), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994).
Hart wrote the screenplay to the Steven Spielberg feature film Hook which functioned as a sequel to J. M. Barrie's original story, with Peter Pan having grown into adulthood. [1] Later, he wrote the 2005 children's novel Capt. Hook: The Adventures of a Notorious Youth, a prequel depicting the youth of Captain Hook, the nemesis of Peter Pan. He wrote the Francis Ford Coppola-produced horror films Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) [2] and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994).
Hart's writing focuses on adventure and fantasy fare, such as Muppet Treasure Island (1996), Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life (2003), and Epic (2013). He co-created the pirate television drama Crossbones with Luther writer Neil Cross based on Colin Woodard's book The Republic of Pirates. [3] On July 24, 2014, NBC announced that Crossbones had been canceled after one season. [4]
Hart wrote the first draft screenplay of Atlas Shrugged , [5] which was to be fully developed by director Randall Wallace. Hart also wrote an adaptation of The Sirens of Titan , which Kurt Vonnegut approved of before he died, [6] a screenplay adaptation for Crisis in the Hot Zone which was later adapted into a television series in 2019. In 2012, it was announced that TNT would create a television series based on the Dean Koontz's Frankenstein novels. [7]
Hart has been a faculty member of the Columbia University Graduate Film program and has mentored for Sundance Film Labs, the Austin Writer’s Ranch, and the Equinoxe-Europe Writing Workshops. [8] [9]
Hart is the son of Albert Hart and Alice Hart. He has one brother, David (deceased). He studied film and graduated from Southern Methodist University in 1969. He lives in New York with his wife Judith. Their two children, Jake and Julia, are also screenwriters. [10]
| Year | Title | Writer | Producer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1974 | Dirty O'Neil | No | Yes | Associate producer |
| 1977 | The Ransom | No | Yes | |
| 1984 | Gimme an 'F' | Yes | No | |
| 1991 | Hook | Yes | Yes | Executive producer |
| 1992 | Bram Stoker's Dracula | Yes | Yes | Co-producer |
| 1994 | Mary Shelley's Frankenstein | No | Yes | |
| 1996 | Muppet Treasure Island | Yes | No | |
| 1997 | Contact | Yes | No | |
| 2002 | Tuck Everlasting | Yes | No | |
| 2003 | Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life | Yes | No | Story by |
| 2005 | Sahara | Yes | No | |
| 2007 | The Last Mimzy | Yes | No | |
| 2007 | August Rush | Yes | No | |
| 2013 | Epic | Yes | Yes | Executive producer |
| 2023 | The Last Voyage of the Demeter | Yes | No | received off-screen additional literary material credit. [11] |
| Year | Title | Notes | Network |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story | Miniseries | CBS |
| 2014 | Crossbones | Co-creator | NBC |
| 2019-present | The Hot Zone | Creator, also executive producer | National Geographic |
Abraham "Bram" Stoker was an Irish author who is best known for writing the 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula. During his lifetime, he was better known as the personal assistant of actor Sir Henry Irving and business manager of the West End's Lyceum Theatre, which Irving owned.
Dracula is a novel by Bram Stoker, published in 1897. An epistolary novel, the narrative is related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist and opens with solicitor Jonathan Harker taking a business trip to stay at the castle of a Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula. Harker escapes the castle after discovering that Dracula is a vampire, and the Count moves to England and plagues the seaside town of Whitby. A small group, led by Abraham Van Helsing, investigate, hunt and kill Dracula.
Hammer Film Productions Ltd. is a British film production company based in London. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for a series of Gothic horror and fantasy films made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Many of these involve classic horror characters such as Baron Victor Frankenstein, Count Dracula, and the Mummy, which Hammer reintroduced to audiences by filming them in vivid colour for the first time. Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers, film noir and comedies, as well as, in later years, television series.
Bram Stoker's Dracula is a 1992 American vampire horror film produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and written by James V. Hart, based on the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. The film stars Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves, Richard E. Grant, Cary Elwes, Billy Campbell, Sadie Frost, and Tom Waits. Set in 19th-century England and Romania, it follows the titular vampire (Oldman), who falls in love with Mina Murray (Ryder), the fiancée of his solicitor Jonathan Harker (Reeves). When Dracula begins terrorizing Mina's friends, Professor Abraham Van Helsing (Hopkins), an expert in vampirism, is summoned to bring an end to his reign of terror. Its closing credits theme "Love Song for a Vampire", is written and performed by Annie Lennox.
Hook is a 1991 American fantasy adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by James V. Hart and Malia Scotch Marmo. It stars Robin Williams as Peter Banning / Peter Pan, Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook, Julia Roberts as Tinker Bell, Bob Hoskins as Mr. Smee, Maggie Smith as Granny Wendy and Charlie Korsmo as Jack Banning. It serves as a sequel to J. M. Barrie's 1911 novel Peter and Wendy, focusing on an adult Peter Pan who has forgotten his childhood. In his new life, he is known as Peter Banning, a successful but unimaginative and workaholic lawyer with a wife and two children. However, when his old archenemy, Captain Hook, kidnaps his children, he returns to Neverland to save them. Along the journey, he reclaims the memories of his past and becomes a better person and staging a final confrontation with Hook for the sake of his family.
Van Helsing is a 2004 action horror film written and directed by Stephen Sommers. It stars Hugh Jackman as monster hunter Van Helsing and Kate Beckinsale as Anna Valerious. Van Helsing is both an homage and tribute to the Universal Horror Monster films from the 1930s and 1940s, of which Sommers is a fan.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a 1994 science fiction horror film directed by Kenneth Branagh who also stars as Victor Frankenstein, with Robert De Niro portraying Frankenstein's monster, and co-stars Tom Hulce, Helena Bonham Carter, Ian Holm, John Cleese, Richard Briers and Aidan Quinn. Considered the most faithful film adaptation of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, despite several differences and additions in plot from the novel, the film follows a medical student named Victor Frankenstein who creates new life in the form of a monster composed of various corpses' body parts.
"The Vampyre" is a short work of prose fiction written in 1819 by John William Polidori taken from the story Lord Byron told as part of a contest among Polidori, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and Percy Shelley. The same contest produced the novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. "The Vampyre" is often viewed as the progenitor of the romantic vampire genre of fantasy fiction. The work is described by Christopher Frayling as "the first story successfully to fuse the disparate elements of vampirism into a coherent literary genre."
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is a Gothic surrealistic dark fantasy horror novel by Vítězslav Nezval, written in 1935 and first published ten years afterward in 1945. The avant-garde experimental novel was written before Nezval's dramatic shift to Socialist Realism. It was made into a 1970 Czech film directed by Jaromil Jireš, a prominent example of Czech New Wave cinema.
Dracula's Daughter is a 1936 American vampire horror film produced by Universal Pictures as a sequel to the 1931 film Dracula. Directed by Lambert Hillyer from a screenplay by Garrett Fort, the film stars Otto Kruger, Gloria Holden in the title role, and Marguerite Churchill, and features, as the only cast member to return from the original, Edward Van Sloan – although his character's name was altered from "Van Helsing" to "Von Helsing".
Vampire films have been a staple in world cinema since the era of silent films, so much so that the depiction of vampires in popular culture is strongly based upon their depiction in films throughout the years. The most popular cinematic adaptation of vampire fiction has been from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, with over 170 versions to date. Running a distant second are adaptations of the 1872 novel Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu. By 2005, the Dracula character had been the subject of more films than any other fictional character except Sherlock Holmes.
Dean Koontz's Frankenstein is the collective title of five novels co-written by Dean Koontz. Though technically of the mystery or thriller genres, the novels also feature the trappings of horror, fantasy, and science fiction.
Florence Balcombe was the wife and literary executor of Bram Stoker. She is remembered for her legal dispute with the makers of Nosferatu, an unauthorized film based on her husband's novel Dracula.
The Dracula Society is a London-based literature and travel group with an interest in supernatural and macabre works of fiction, as exemplified by Bram Stoker's Dracula.
The character of Count Dracula from the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, has remained popular over the years, and many forms of media have adopted the character in various forms. In their book Dracula in Visual Media, authors John Edgar Browning and Caroline Joan S. Picart declared that no other horror character or vampire has been emulated more times than Count Dracula. Most variations of Dracula across film, comics, television and documentaries predominantly explore the character of Dracula as he was first portrayed in film, with only a few adapting Stoker's original narrative more closely. These including borrowing the look of Count Dracula in both the Universal's series of Dracula and Hammer's series of Dracula, including include the characters clothing, mannerisms, physical features hair style and his motivations such as wanting to be in a home away from Europe.
Ehren Kruger is an American film screenwriter and producer. He is best known for writing three of the five installments in the original Transformers film series: Revenge of the Fallen, Dark of the Moon, and Age of Extinction, in addition to the American version of The Ring and its sequel The Ring Two and the American adaptation of Ghost in the Shell.
"Dracula's Guest" is a short story by Bram Stoker, first published in the short story collection Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories (1914). It is believed to have been intended as the first chapter for Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, but was deleted prior to publication as the original publishers felt it was superfluous to the story.
David John Skal was an American cultural historian, critic, writer, and on-camera commentator known for his research and analysis of horror films, horror history and horror culture.
Margaret Webling was a British playwright, novelist and poet. Her 1927 play version of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is notable for naming the creature "Frankenstein" after its creator, and for being the inspiration of the classic 1931 film directed by James Whale.
Dracula is a film series of horror films from Universal Pictures based on the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker and its 1927 play adaptation. The series is a loose collection of films, with historians stating that the films all reference characters, events or at least passing knowledge of the 1931 English-language production of Dracula, with historians noting that Dracula's Daughter and Son of Dracula are more closely related to the 1931 film while the character of Dracula would make smaller appearances in later films such as House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula. After Dracula's Daughter, the character of Dracula and other vampires in the series became more Americanized, starting with the release of Son of Dracula, and the later House of films. The character of Dracula appears in all the films outside of Dracula's Daughter, where he is portrayed by Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr., and John Carradine in the House of films.
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