John August is a screenwriter living and working in Los Angeles.
His screenwriting credits include Go, Big Fish, Corpse Bride, Charlie’s Angels and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He received a 2004 BAFTA nomination for his screenplay for Big Fish, and a 2006 Grammy nomination for lyrics for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
The Nines, his writing/directing debut starring Ryan Reynolds, Melissa McCarthy, Hope Davis and Elle Fanning, premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival Critics’ Week.
He is currently writing the book for the Broadway musical adaptation of Big Fish, with music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa, directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman. The show was announced in June 2011, with plans to reach the stage in 2012.
He has written for several magazines, including Esquire and Men’s Health. He has two notable short stories: The Variant and Snake People.
He created the popular iOS app FDX Reader with Nima Yousefi and Ryan Nelson.
As of August 2011, he’s written 39 screenplays. This figure includes spec scripts, assignments, TV pilots and rewrites.
In roughly chronological order, these projects are:
- Here and Now
- How to Eat Fried Worms *
- A Wrinkle in Time *
- Devil’s Canyon
- Go *
- Blue Streak *
- Demonology
- Titan A.E. *
- Charlie’s Angels *
- Fenwick’s Suit
- D.C. (pilot) *
- Big Fish *
- The Thief of Always
- Father Knows Less
- Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle *
- Fury
- Scooby-Doo *
- Barbarella
- Jurassic Park 3 *
- Minority Report *
- The Circle (pilot) *
- Scared Guys
- Bob the Musical
- The Rundown *
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory *
- Corpse Bride *
- Tarzan
- Ops (pilot)
- The Eye *
- Shazam!
- The Nines *
- Hancock *
- Iron Man *
- Dark Shadows *
- Frankenweenie *
- The City That Sailed
- Preacher
- Lovecraft
- Monsterpocalypse
Projects marked with an asterisk (*) have been produced or are in production.
Ops was co-written with Jordan Mechner.
Five of the projects listed above were spec scripts not based on pre-existing material: Here and Now, Devil’s Canyon, Go, Fury and The Nines.
John received a BA in Journalism from Drake University, and an MFA in Film Producing from the Peter Stark Program in USC’s School of Cinematic Arts.
John is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, voting in the Writers branch.
About this site
John runs johnaugust.com at his own expense. Why? Well…
- He’s generally pretty philanthropic.
- It gives him an excuse for not writing.
- It exercises his inner geek.
- It allows him to use fonts other than 12 pt Courier.
- He’s usually pretty sure he’s right.
- And most importantly, it lets him answer a given screenwriting question once, rather than 5,000 times.
johnaugust.com has been around since Summer 2003, though some of the content is several years older. It started as a repository for the 100+ screenwriting advice columns John had written for IMDb, which were hard to find in that massive site.
As of August 2011, there are more than 1,500 posts on the site, and 31,000 approved comments.
This site is designed by Ryan Nelson. Additional editorial supervision by Stuart Friedel.