Settings
Best film screenwriters (all time)
A ranking of writers who create film plots, stories, and ideas. A.k.a. screenplay writers, screenwriters, scriptwriters, or scenarists.
Person:
Gender:
Loc:
Age:
Charlie Kaufman
Charles Stuart "Charlie" Kaufman (born November 19, 1958) is an American screenwriter, producer, director, and lyricist. He wrote the films Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation (2002), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind...
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick (July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor who did much of his work in the United Kingdom. Kubrick's films covered a variety of genres, includi...
Alejandro González Iñárritu
(1963)Alejandro González Iñárritu; credited since 2014 as Alejandro G. Iñárritu; born August 15, 1963) is a Mexican film director, producer, screenwriter, and former composer. He is the first Mexican director to be nominated for the Aca...
Spike Jonze
Spike Jonze (born Adam Spiegel; October 22, 1969) is an American director, producer, screenwriter and actor, whose work includes music videos, commercials, film and television. He started his feature film directing career with Bei...
Wes Anderson
Wesley Wales "Wes" Anderson (born May 1, 1969) is an American film director, film producer, screenwriter, and actor. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for The Royal Tenenbaums in 2001, Moonrise Ki...
Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog Stipetić (born 5 September 1942), known as Werner Herzog, is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, author, actor and opera director.
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese (born November 17, 1942) is an American director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and film historian, whose career spans more than 45 years.
Atom Egoyan
Atom Egoyan, (born July 19, 1960) is a Canadian stage director and film director.
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino (born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, screenwriter, cinematographer, producer, and actor. His films are characterized by non-linear storylines, satirical subject matter, and an aestheticizati...
Christopher Nolan
Christopher Jonathan James Nolan (born 30 July 1970) is an English-American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He has created several of the most commercially successful films of the early 21st century. His nine films have...
Richard Linklater
Richard Stuart Linklater (born July 30, 1960) is an American film director and screenwriter.
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American actor, film director, producer, musician, and politician. He rose to international fame with his role as the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy of sp...
Ben Affleck
Benjamin Geza Affleck-Boldt (born August 15, 1972), better known as Ben Affleck, is an American actor and filmmaker. He has won two Academy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. Affleck began his career as a child actor, starring...
David Cronenberg
David Paul Cronenberg, (born March 15, 1943) is a Canadian filmmaker, screenwriter, and actor.
Zhang Yimou
Zhang Yimou (born 14 November 1951) is a Chinese film director, producer, screenwriter and actor, and former cinematographer. He is counted amongst the Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, having made his directorial debut in 1...
Stephen Chow
Stephen Chow (Chinese: 周星馳, Chow Sing-Chi; born 22 June 1962) is a Hong Kong actor, screenwriter, film director, producer and political adviser of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference...
Will Ferrell
John William "Will" Ferrell (born July 16, 1967) is an American actor, comedian, producer, and writer. He first established himself in the mid-1990s as a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, and has subse...
Ang Lee
Ang Lee (Chinese: 李安; pinyin: Lǐ Ān; born October 23, 1954) is a Taiwanese-born American film director, screenwriter and producer. Lee has won the Academy Award for Best Director twice: for Brokeback Mountain (2005) and for Life o...
Terrence Malick
Terrence Frederick Malick (born November 30, 1943) is an American film director, screenwriter and producer. In a career spanning over four decades he has directed eight feature films. Malick made his directorial debut with the dra...
Don Bluth
Donald Virgil "Don" Bluth (born September 13, 1937) is an American animator, film director, producer, writer, production designer, video game designer and animation instructor who is known for directing animated films, including T...
Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi (born October 29, 1938) is an American director of animated and live-action films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 a...
Robert Zemeckis
Robert Lee Zemeckis (born May 14, 1952) is an American filmmaker and screenwriter. He has directed some of the biggest blockbuster hits of the past few decades. He first came to public attention in the 1980s as the director of Rom...
Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski (born Rajmund Roman Thierry Polański, 18 August 1933) is a Paris-born Pole and, since 1976, naturalized French-Polish film director, producer, writer, and actor. Born in Paris to Polish parents, he moved with his fa...
Frank Darabont
Frank Arpad Darabont (born Darabont Ferenc; January 28, 1959) is a Hungarian-American film director, screenwriter and producer who has been nominated for three Academy Awards and a Golden Globe Award. In his early career he was pr...
Baz Luhrmann
Mark Anthony "Baz" Luhrmann (born 17 September 1962) is an Australian film director, screenwriter and producer best known for The Red Curtain Trilogy, comprising his romantic comedy film Strictly Ballroom (1992), the romantic dram...
Jaco Van Dormael
Jaco Van Dormael (born 9 February 1957) is a Belgian film director, screenwriter and playwright. Van Dormael spent his childhood travelling around Europe, before going on to study filmmaking at the INSAS in Brussels, where he wrot...
Sion Sono
Sion Sono (born December 18, 1961) is a Japanese filmmaker, author and poet.
Robert Rodriguez
Robert Anthony Rodríguez (born June 20, 1968) is an American filmmaker and musician. He shoots and produces many of his films in Mexico and his home state, Texas. Rodriguez directed the 1992 action film El Mariachi, which was a co...
Ben Stiller
Benjamin Edward Meara "Ben" Stiller (born November 30, 1965) is an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker. He is the son of veteran comedians and actors Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. After beginning his acting career with a play,...
Aaron Sorkin
Aaron Benjamin Sorkin (born June 9, 1961) is an American screenwriter, producer, and playwright. His works include the Broadway plays A Few Good Men and The Farnsworth Invention; the television series Sports Night, The West Wing,...
Arthur C. Clarke
Sri Lankabhimanya Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS (16 December 1917 – 19 March 2008) was a British science fiction writer, science writer and futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host. He is perhaps mo...
Todd Haynes
Todd Haynes (born January 2, 1961) is an American independent film director and screenwriter. He is known for having directed the acclaimed films Safe (1995), Far from Heaven (2002), I'm Not There (2007), and Carol (2015). Haynes...
Adam McKay
(1968)Adam McKay (born April 17, 1968) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, comedian, and actor. McKay served as head writer for the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live for two seasons. He has a comedy partners...
Tom McCarthy
Thomas Joseph "Tom" McCarthy (born June 7, 1966) is an American film director, screenwriter, and actor who has appeared in several movies, including Meet the Parents and Good Night, and Good Luck, and television shows such as The...
Judd Apatow
Judd Apatow (born December 6, 1967) is an American producer, writer, director, actor, and comedian. He is best known for his work in comedy films, and is the founder of Apatow Productions and also developed the television series F...
Ava DuVernay
Ava Marie DuVernay (born August 24, 1972) is an American director, screenwriter, film marketer, and film distributor. At the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, DuVernay won the Best Director Prize for her second feature film Middle of N...
Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa ( March 23, 1910 – September 6, 1998) was a Japanese filmmaker. Kurosawa directed 30 films in a career spanning 57 years.
Jean-Jacques Annaud
Jean-Jacques Annaud (born 1 October 1943) is a French film director, screenwriter and producer, best known for directing Quest for Fire (1981), The Name of the Rose (1986), The Lover (1991), and Seven Years in Tibet (1997). Annaud...
Robert Altman
Robert Bernard Altman (February 20, 1925 – November 20, 2006) was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He was nominated five times for the Academy Award for Best Director. He preferred large ensemble casts for hi...
Xavier Dolan
Xavier Dolan (born 20 March 1989), sometimes credited as Xavier Dolan-Tadros, is a Canadian actor and filmmaker.
Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang (December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976) was a German-Austrian filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor.
George Lucas
George Walton Lucas, Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an American filmmaker and entrepreneur. He is best known as the creator of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, as well as the founder of Lucasfilm and Industrial Light and Ma...
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg (born December 18, 1946) is an American filmmaker. He is also one of the co-founders of DreamWorks Studios.
Xu Jinglei
Xu Jinglei (born April 16, 1974) is a Chinese actress and film director. She graduated from Beijing Film Academy in 1997. She has also spanned an acting career with directing since 2003. Although not well known outside of China, X...
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Lee Hopper (May 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010) was an American actor, filmmaker, photographer, and artist. He attended the Actors Studio, making his first television appearance in 1954, and soon after appeared in two films with J...
Neill Blomkamp
Neill Blomkamp (born 17 September 1979) is a South African-Canadian film director, film producer, screenwriter, and animator, Blomkamp employs a documentary-style, hand-held, cinéma vérité technique, blending naturalistic and phot...
Matt Damon
Matthew Paige "Matt" Damon (born October 8, 1970) is an American actor and filmmaker.
Frank Miller
Frank Miller (born January 27, 1957) is an American writer, artist, and film director best known for his dark comic book stories and graphic novels such as Ronin, Daredevil: Born Again, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City and 300. H...
Andrew Stanton
Andrew Stanton (born December 3, 1965) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, and voice actor based at Pixar. His film work includes writing and directing Pixar's A Bug's Life (1998) (as co-director), Finding Nemo (...
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Joseph Leonard Gordon-Levitt (born February 17, 1981) is an American actor and filmmaker. As a child actor, he appeared in the films A River Runs Through It, Angels in the Outfield and 10 Things I Hate About You, and as Tommy Solo...
Items 1-50 of 84
expand...
Minimum number of votes to be in this ranking is currently 1. Items in: 84
Candidates list: 24.
Candidates list: 24.
See also the lists:
Use the settings button for different ranking variations.