Koepp, David
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1963- ) US screenwriter, director and author, who remains almost certainly best known for his long and successful career in the first of these fields. Of his thirty or more screenplays since 1988, several (sometimes in collaboration) have been sf, including Jurassic Park (1993) directed by Steven Spielberg [for sequels see that entry], Mission: Impossible (1996) directed by Brian De Palma, Spider-Man (2002) directed by Sam Raimi, War of the Worlds (2005) directed by Steven Spielberg [see Checklist below], Zathura: A Space Adventure (2005) directed by Jon Favreau and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) directed by Steven Spielberg. He is an exceedingly efficient constructor of stories designed for large-scale cinematic realizations. None of the films he has directed himself, except the supernatural Ghost Town (2008), a ghost story, have been fantastic.
Koepp is of literary sf interest for his first novel, Cold Storage (2019), a Technothriller whose protagonist attempts to isolate a possibly space-born bacterium in Australia, but thirty years later, in the Near Future, is called back into service, as the Mutant bug has escaped, and in this return of Pandemic conditions may be transforming those it bites into Zombies (see Horror in SF). [JC]
David Koepp
born Pewaukee, Wisconsin: 9 June 1963
works
- War of the Worlds: The Shooting Script (New York: Newmarket Press, 2005) with josh Friedman [filmscript: War of the Worlds: pb/]
- Cold Storage (New York: HarperCollins/Ecco, 2019) [hb/]
- Aurora (New York: HarperCollins/HQ, 2022) [hb/]
links
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