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John David Logan (born 24 September 1961; age 62) is the Academy Award- and Emmy Award-nominated screenwriter, producer and ardent Star Trek fan who wrote the screenplay for Star Trek Nemesis, for which he also shared story credit with Rick Berman and Brent Spiner. Several minor characters in Star Trek Nemesis were named for friends of Logan's. Romulan Commander Donatra and Helmsman Branson were named for friend Donna Branson, while Commander Martin Madden was named for Logan's companion, Marty Madden. In addition, the Bassen Rift was named for his basset hound.

Career[]

Hailing from Chicago, Illinois, and graduating from Northwestern University in 1983, Logan began as a playwright before turning to writing for the screen. His first foray into screenwriting was the 1996 made-for-television movie Tornado! His first feature was the 1999 horror movie Bats, which starred Nemesis actress Dina Meyer and Star Trek: The Next Generation guest actor Bob Gunton. He then wrote the acclaimed TV movie RKO 281, for which he won a Writers Guild of America (WGA) TV Award and received an Emmy Award nomination. James Cromwell was one of the main actors in RKO 281.

Logan received his Academy Award nominations for his work on the Academy Award-winning motion pictures Gladiator (2000) and The Aviator (2004), the latter of which also featured Brent Spiner in a small role. Logan also received BAFTA Award nominations for these films, as well as nominations from the Golden Globes, the Satellite Awards, and the WGA for The Aviator. In addition, Logan wrote the stories and the initial screenplays for the critically-lauded films Any Given Sunday and The Last Samurai. In 2007, he wrote the Tim Burton-directed Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. He earned Saturn Award nominations from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films for both Gladiator and Sweeney Todd.

Logan has written scripts for a number of high-profile films in recent years as well. He scripted the 2011 Academy Award-winning CG-animated film Rango, which featured the voices of Ian Abercrombie, John Cothran, Jr., Timothy Olyphant, and Stephen Root. He adapted the novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret as the 3D feature Hugo for director Martin Scorsese, which was also released in 2011 and on which Robert Legato served as the visual effects supervisor. In addition, Logan wrote and produced an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Coriolanus, directed by Ralph Fiennes. He also scripted the 2011 HBO movie The Miraculous Year, which starred Frank Langella. Logan wrote the initial screenplay for Lincoln, a biographical drama on Abraham Lincoln directed by Steven Spielberg, released in 2012.

In 2012, Logan co-wrote the screenplay for the 23rd James Bond film, Skyfall, which was edited by Nemesis director Stuart Baird, followed by Spectre in 2015. In 2016, Logan wrote the screenplay for the drama film Genius, and in 2017, he co-wrote Alien Covenant for director Ridley Scott.

Logan also created and co-wrote the horror series Penny Dreadful starring Shazad Latif and Harry Treadaway, which ran for three seasons between 2014 and 2016.

External links[]

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