Terry Rossio

Biographical information
Born	July 2, 1960 Kalamazoo, Michigan, United States
Nationality	American
Career
Occupation	Screenwriter Executive Producer
Official website	wordplayer.com

"Jerry gave Gore such freedom, and Gore was confident enough with his ideas that he had no problem being collaborative. We just knew the approach we wanted to take; we knew we wanted these characters and these specific moments in the story. We wanted it to be a very classic, Jane Austen-style, bodice-ripping romance. Ted and I actually worked very closely with Jerry, Mike Stenson and Chad Oman; they were instrumental in developing the story. Writers don’t often have that kind of consistent, involved access to producers, and producers are not necessarily as knowledgeable as these guys are about structure and dialogue."

―Terry Rossio

Terry Rossio (born July 2, 1960 in Kalamazoo, Michigan) is an American screenwriter. Along with his writing partner Ted Elliott, Rossio has written some of the most successful films, including Aladdin, Shrek and Pirates of the Caribbean.

Biography

Early life and career

Rossio was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan. After graduating from Saddleback High School in Santa Ana, California, he went on to study at California State University, Fullerton where he received his Bachelor of Arts in Communications, with an emphasis in radio, television and film. He, along with co-writer Ted Elliott, was the founder of Wordplay a.k.a. Wordplayer.com, one of the premier screenwriting sites on the Internet.

Since 1986, Elliott and Rossio have been members of the Writers Guild of America, West. In 1992, the pair co-wrote the highest-grossing film of the year, the Disney animated feature Aladdin, starring Robin Williams. Their live-action feature-film credits include Little Monsters, starring Fred Savage; Small Soldiers, starring Kirsten Dunst; Godzilla, starring Matthew Broderick; and The Mask of Zorro, starring Antonio Banderas and Anthony Hopkins.

In 1996, Elliott and Rossio became the first writers signed to an overall writing and producing deal at DreamWorks SKG. Their animated projects at DreamWorks, in addition to Shrek, include The Road to El Dorado, featuring Kevin Kline and Kenneth Branagh; Antz (creative consultants), featuring Woody Allen; and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (creative consultants), featuring Brad Pitt and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio wrote one of the most successful trilogies in motion-picture history, with the Walt Disney Pictures/Jerry Bruckheimer Films productions of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. They also worked with Jerry Bruckheimer as screenwriters of G-Force and received story credit on National Treasure: Book of Secrets. Elliott and Rossio also wrote the DreamWorks animated feature Shrek, winner of the first Academy Award for Best Animated Film in 2002.

Pirates of the Caribbean

Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio wrote one of the most successful trilogies in motion-picture history, with the Walt Disney Pictures/Jerry Bruckheimer Films productions of Gore Verbinski's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.

Terry Rossio was one of the four writers for The Curse of the Black Pearl, and worked with his writing partner Ted Elliott on the sequels, Dead Man's Chest, At World's End, and the fourth film On Stranger Tides, as well as the short film Tales of the Code: Wedlocked. After the making of On Stranger Tides, it was announced that Terry Rossio would write a screenplay for the then-untitled fifth film, Dead Men Tell No Tales, but without the assistance of Elliott.

On May 2011, it was reported that Terry Rossio delivered the script for the fifth film to Disney executives, but the report was later debunked by Rossio himself. On October 2011, Bruckheimer noted that Rossio was doing his "usual phenomenal work" on the film's script. As of January 2012, Terry Rossio was still reworking the script. Rossio's version of the film was ultimately discarded. As Rossio himself revealed on his Wordplay website, "My version of Dead Men Tell No Tales was set aside because it featured a female villain, and Johnny Depp was worried that would be redundant to Dark Shadows, which also featured a female villain." He later commented that other possible reasons, such as it being too ambitious or actor commitments, like Keira Knightley having declined involvement before having later agreed.

On January 11, 2013, it was reported that Jeff Nathanson had been hired to write a screenplay for the fifth film, though it was unclear whether or not Nathanson worked from Terry Rossio's draft or as a page one rewrite. Nathanson had since been said to be the writer of Dead Men Tell No Tales, directed by Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg, while Rossio's continued involvement in the film was to be his role as an Executive Producer. Although Terry Rossio was credited alongside Jeff Nathanson for the film's story, Rossio himself confirmed he did not collaborate with Nathanson on the story, nor was he involved in some of the decisions made for the film, such as having the sons or daughters of any of the characters, the return of Will Turner, and the continuity issues presented by the Trident of Poseidon breaking all curses.

PotC Films

• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl - Screenwriter
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest - Screenwriter
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End - Screenwriter
• Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - Executive Producer/Screenwriter
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Tales of the Code: Wedlocked - Screenwriter
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales - Executive Producer/"Story By:"

Trivia

• In May 2018, through the message boards of his website Wordplay, Terry Rossio about what his favorite script was that he wrote. Among the his projects, both released and unproduced, Rossio said:
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales was his favorite screenplay that he had written on his own with no writing partner.
  • His favorite adaption was the (unproduced) adaptation of Sandman written alongside Ted Elliott, with the (unproduced) screenplay for The Moon is a Harsh Mistress a close second.
  • Rossio admitted naming his favorite co-written screenplay assignment was tough, out of Disney's Aladdin, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, DreamWorks's Shrek, Men in Black, and The Mask of Zorro all in the running. Ultimately, he picked The Curse of the Black Pearl.
  • His favorite produced co-written screenplay spec is Déjà Vu, also pointing out he still hadn't seen the movie.
  • Overall, just for pure writing, Rossio said Curse of the Black Pearl, with Deja Vu a close second.

External links

• Wordplayer.com - official site
• Terry Rossio on Wikipedia
• Terry Rossio at the Internet Movie Database