Shane Black American Filmmaker

Shane Black American Filmmaker

Shane Black American Filmmaker

Shane Black: Shane Black (born December 16, 1961) is an American filmmaker and actor who has written such films as Lethal Weapon and Lethal Weapon 2The Monster SquadThe Last Boy ScoutLast Action Hero, and The Long Kiss Goodnight. As an actor, Black is best known for his role as Rick Hawkins in Predator (1987).

He made his directorial debut with the film Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in 2005. Black went on to write and direct Iron Man 3 (2013), The Nice Guys (2016) and The Predator (2018). He is set to direct the upcoming film adaptation of Doc Savage.

Considered one of the pioneer screenwriters of the action genre, Black made his mark with his Lethal Weapon (1987) screenplay. He also collaborated on the story of the sequel, Lethal Weapon 2 (1989). Each successive script he turned in had a higher price attached it, from The Last Boy Scout (1991) to The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), and in between a re-write on the McTiernan/Schwarzenegger Last Action Hero (1993) script.

Shane Black
Shane Black

Shane Black Predator

Black was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Paul and Patricia Ann Black. His father was in the printing business and helped Black get an interest in hardboiled fiction, such as the works of Mickey Spillane and the Matt Helm series.

After living in the suburbs of Lower Burrell and Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania, his family moved to Fullerton, California, during his sophomore year of high school. There he attended Sunny Hills High School and later UCLA where he majored in film and theater and graduated in 1983. While Black had a long history writing comic strips, short stories, and journalism, only during his senior year did he decide to make a living from it once his classmate Fred Dekker showed him a science-fiction script he did for an assignment. Black’s older brother Terry also wrote short stories and decided to move into screenplays starting with 1988’s Dead Heat, in which Shane has a cameo.

Shane Black Movies

Year Film
Director Writer Producer Notes
1987 Lethal Weapon No Yes No
The Monster Squad No Yes No
Predator No Uncredited No Script contributor
1989 Lethal Weapon 2 No Yes No
1991 The Last Boy Scout No Yes Executive
1993 Last Action Hero No Yes No
1996 The Long Kiss Goodnight No Yes Yes
2005 Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Yes Yes No Directorial Debut
2006 A.W.O.L. No Yes Executive Short film
Credited as Holly Martins
Executive producer as Harry Lime
2013 Iron Man 3 Yes Yes No
2015 Edge Yes Yes Yes TV Movie
2016 The Nice Guys Yes Yes No
2018 The Predator[30] Yes Yes No

Shane Dawson Black Face

After graduating, Black worked as a typist for a temp agency, a data entry clerk for the 1984 Summer Olympics and an usher in a Westwood movie theater. Eventually, he asked for the financial support of his parents during the six-month development of a script, The Shadow Company, a supernatural thriller set in Vietnam. With Dekker’s help, the script landed him an agent and several lunch meetings with mid-level studio executives. This attracted 20th Century Fox executives, who were interested in having Black rewrite scripts. Eventually Black wrote an action film script, Lethal Weapon, in about six weeks, which landed him a $250,000 deal with Warner Bros. During the rewrites, Black asked producer Joel Silver for a small acting role in another film Silver was preparing at the time, Predator, a film for which Black also made uncredited contributions to the script. At the same time, Black helped Dekker write The Monster Squad, which along with Lethal Weapon and Predator came out in 1987. Since then, Black has acted in five additional films and in two episodes for the TV series Dark Justice.

Shane Black American Filmmaker
Shane Black American Filmmaker

Once Warner Bros. requested a Lethal Weapon sequel, Black wrote the first draft of Lethal Weapon 2 with the help of novelist Warren Murphy. Although it was not used, Black said in later interviews that Warner Bros. did not like his original script for Lethal Weapon 2, which was also titled Play Dirty, because of how dark and violent it was and due to his decision to kill off main character Martin Riggs in the ending of the script. Nevertheless, other people thought that his script was brilliant, and he himself considers it to be his best work and the best script he has ever written. Although many fans have tried to find a copy of it, Black’s version of the script was never released.

Feeling burned out and having conflicts with the studio, Black left the project after six months, earning only $125,000 (out of a $250,000 payment split with Murphy) for his work. After two sabbatical years, Black decided to take on an old idea of his that emerged during the production of Lethal Weapon and turn it into a full screenplay. The result, The Last Boy Scout, earned him $1.75 million in 1991. Black would also earn $1 million for his rewrite of Last Action Heroin 1993. He would set a record by receiving $4 million for writing The Long Kiss Goodnight in 1994.

Shane Black Directing

Black made his directorial debut with 2005’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and later directed (and co-wrote with Drew Pearce) 2013’s Iron Man 3, which ranks as the fifteenth-highest-grossing film of all time worldwide.

Black next directed and co-wrote Edge, a pilot for a potential series for Amazon Studios. The film was released on VOD but not picked up for a series. He followed this with the action-comedy The Nice Guys, starring Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling, and produced by Joel Silver. Warner Bros. handled North American rights to the film, which was released on May 20, 2016.

Black next directed the fourth non-Alien-related film in the Predator series, The Predator, which he co-wrote with Fred Dekker. The film was released on September 14, 2018.

Black’s next projects include an adaptation of Doc Savage, and The Destroyer, based on the 1985 film Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, starring Fred Ward. He was also briefly attached by Warner Bros. in 2011, to direct a live-action American adaptation of the popular Japanese supernatural-thriller manga series Death Note, bringing his close collaborators Anthony Bagarozzi and Charles Mondry to write the screenplay, replacing Charley and Vlas Parlapanides as the project’s previous screenwriters. However, by 2014, he had quietly left the project, due to reported creative differences and other commitments. The studio had intended to omit “Shinigamis” (Japanese gods of death), who were originally present in the manga series, from the film’s storyline, and revamp the main character: Light Yagami, into a more benevolent and sympathetic protagonist and change the story’s moral theme of justice into one of vengeance, which Black had opposed, who intended to create a more faithful adaptation of the original manga. Adding to that, he decided to focus more on his Doc Savage and Predator projects, which resulted in his absence from the project’s later developments and horror director Adam Wingard being eventually hired to helm the project by 2015.

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