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Shane Salerno is a Director, Scriptwriter and Producer American born on 27 november 1972 at Memphis (USA)

Shane Salerno

Shane Salerno
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Nationality USA
Birth 27 november 1972 (51 years) at Memphis (USA)

Shane Salerno (born November 27, 1972) is an American screenwriter, producer, director and New York Times bestselling author.
At the age of 24 he co-wrote the worldwide blockbuster Armageddon directed by Michael Bay, which became the highest-grossing film of 1998. He most recently co-wrote and executive produced Savages directed by Oliver Stone. On August 1, 2013 he was announced as co-screenwriter of the sequel Avatar 4 with James Cameron.

In television, he served as a writer-producer of the Golden Globe-nominated Hawaii Five-0 for CBS, (2010–present), co-creator, executive producer and showrunner of UC: Undercover for NBC (2000–2002) and writer for Fox's New York Undercover (1995–1998), the first police drama on American television to feature two people of color in the starring roles. He began his career straight out of high school as a writer-director apprentice to nine-time Emmy winning director-producer Gregory Hoblit, on NYPD Blue.

He is the producer and director of the documentary Salinger about reclusive author J. D. Salinger which was released theatrically by The Weinstein Company on September 6, 2013 and then premieres as the 200th episode of American Masters on January 21, 2014.

His first book, Salinger, (with David Shields), was released by Simon & Schuster on September 3, 2013 and was #1 on The Los Angeles Times bestseller list and #6 on The New York Times bestseller list. It was also a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and an Amazon Best Book of the Month.

Detour Magazine voted him one of "Hollywood's true shapers of popular culture", and Fade In Magazine selected Salerno as one of the "100 people you need to know in Hollywood".

Biography

Early life and education
Shane Salerno was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1972. He attended 10 schools in 12 years on both coasts of the United States including St. John's College High School, a military Academy in Washington, D.C. where Salerno was co-captain of the football team and the only write-in class President since the school was founded in 1851. At San Dieguito High School in Encinitas, California, Salerno was editor of the school newspaper, played varsity football and was voted "most likely to succeed" by his classmates.


Teenage filmmaker
Sundown: The Future of Children and Drugs
Salerno first made national headlines as a high school senior when he wrote, produced and directed the award winning documentary film Sundown: The Future of Children and Drugs. The film had its world premiere on Larry King Live in September 1991. Larry King ended the interview by saying "And Shane Salerno, one has a feeling we are going to be hearing about you. I have this feeling." Sundown won several "best documentary of the year" honors and Salerno was honored in separate ceremonies in both houses of the United States Congress.


NYPD Blue
At the age of 19, Salerno was invited by Gregory Hoblit, a nine-time Emmy winning producer/director, to apprentice as a writer/director on NYPD Blue. In an interview with Creative Screenwriting, Salerno credited the backstage pass as his film school.


New York Undercover
At 22, Salerno signed a three-year contract with Universal Television to work on various series beginning with the successful Fox police series New York Undercover.


Steven Spielberg hires to write first screenplay
Salerno made the transition to features at 23 when Steven Spielberg hired him to adapt the World War II submarine thriller 'Thunder Below' based on the book by Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Eugene B. Fluckey. Salerno's first feature film script was also one of the earliest projects put into development by the newly formed DreamWorks Pictures. In an April 29, 1999 article in Variety, Salerno stated that he went to "writing school" under Spielberg.


Armageddon
In 1997, director Michael Bay recruited a 24-year-old Salerno to rewrite Jonathan Hensleigh's screenplay Armageddon. In the book Visions of Armageddon, Michael Bay calls Salerno's work "brilliant". The blockbuster film debuted at #1 on July 1, 1998 and was the highest grossing film of 1998, earning more than half a billion dollars worldwide. Following his work on Armageddon Variety selected Salerno as one of the "hottest new creatives on the film scene".


Shaft
In 1998, director John Singleton asked Salerno to serve as his writing partner on Shaft. The Singleton-Salerno collaboration (aided by Richard Price) was well reviewed by major critics and resulted in Salerno's second #1 film when "Shaft" debuted on June 16, 2000.

Salerno then pushed into more dramatic material with screenplays for Academy Award winning directors Ron Howard (The Bay of Pigs), William Friedkin (Night Train/Sonny Liston Story), Academy Award nominee Michael Mann (The Border) and a post 9/11 spy thriller for Oscar winning producers Michael Douglas and Irwin Winkler for Douglas to star in.

In 1999, Salerno sold the rights to the bestseller Zodiac to Disney's Touchstone Pictures in a seven figure deal announced in Variety on August 4, 1997. When Disney let the rights lapse, David Fincher directed Zodiac based on the same book for another studio.


UC: Undercover
In 2001–2002, Salerno returned to television by co-creating (with crime novelist Don Winslow) the NBC series UC: Undercover which TV Guide described as "Donnie Brasco meets Mission Impossible." The series starred Vera Farmiga, Oded Fehr, Jon Seda and Ving Rhames. According to an October, 2001 profile in Reel West Magazine, Salerno served as executive producer, showrunner, head writer, and music supervisor. The series won and was nominated for awards in acting, cinematography and sound.

In October 2003, Salerno re-teamed with blockbuster director Michael Bay on a television crime series for ABC that Salerno created and Bay was set to direct.
In 2004, Salerno rewrote the screenplay for Alien vs. Predator which debuted #1 at the box office on August 13 and went onto become the most successful film in the history of either franchise. His work led 20th Century Fox to hire him to write the sequel Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem which was a worldwide box office hit in December, 2007.

In 2004 Salerno became the youngest "Guest of Honor" speaker in the history of the Los Angeles Screenwriting Expo. He made follow up appearances in 2005 and 2006. When interviewed for Expo 5, Creative Screenwriting Magazine publisher Erik Bauer remarked that "Shane Salerno has been really supportive over the years, and is a great mentor for a number of writers that I know."

On September 12, 2008, the Hollywood Reporter announced that 20th Century Fox had pre-emptively purchased Salerno's spec script "Doomsday Protocol" in a "seven figure deal."

In May 2009, Salerno signed on to write a project for James Cameron and 20th Century Fox.


License to Steal
On Monday, June 29, 2009, Variety carried a front page story about Salerno selling "License to Steal," a pitch for "seven figures upfront" to Paramount Pictures and Kurtzman-Orci Productions (Star Trek, Transformers). Variety described the project as "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid set in the world of hi-line repo." Several studios and A-list directors pursued Salerno. According to Variety, Salerno made the pitch four times. He accompanied Bryan Singer (X-Men, Usual Suspects) to Sony, McG (Terminator: Salvation) to Warner Brothers and Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) to Universal before deciding on Paramount Pictures and Kurtzman-Orci in a deal Variety said was "...the priciest project deal of the summer." Kurtzman and Orci issued a joint statement: "We're thrilled to be working with Shane, a wildly inventive and talented creator."


Fantastic Voyage
On December 10, 2009, MTV broke the story that the "secret James Cameron/Shane Salerno project" is a remake of the 1966 Academy Award winning film Fantastic Voyage in 3-D.

On March 31, 2010 a front page Variety story announced that Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum) will direct the film from Salerno's screenplay for 20th Century Fox and Lightstorm Entertainment.

Producer Jon Landau (Avatar) stated the following to Home Theater Forum: "We have been in conversations with Paul Greengrass but nothing has been concluded. Shane Salerno has delivered us a great script and we look forward to moving forward soon."


Hawaii Five-0
In 2010, Salerno joined the writing-producing team of Hawaii Five-0. In its first season, Hawaii Five-0 also won the "Favorite New TV Drama" at the 37th People's Choice Awards on January 5, 2011.

In addition to his producing duties, Salerno was credited for writing the episode "Po'ipu" (Episode 9) on November 15, 2010, co-writing "El Malama" (Episode 16) on February 7, 2011 and "Ho'op'i" (Episode 20) on April 18, 2011 which featured a special guest appearance by Sean Combs.


Savages
On March 4, 2010, Deadline New York announced that Oliver Stone would next direct an adaptation of Don Winslow's crime novel Savages, co-written and executive produced by Shane Salerno. The all-star cast included John Travolta, Benicio Del Toro, Salma Hayek, Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Johnson, Emile Hirsch, and Blake Lively. Universal Pictures distributed the film.

Filming began on July 6, 2011. The film was released on July 6, 2012.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three and a half stars (out of four) and praised Oliver Stone's direction, saying, "Much of the fascination of Savages comes through Stone's treatment of the negotiations, which involve percentages, sliding scales over three years, an ultimate payout, and other financial details that drugs have in common with big business. It's spellbinding to watch the two sides trying to out think each other."


Satori
Salerno has also adapted (with crime novelist Don Winslow) the forthcoming 2014 spy thriller Satori set to star Leonardo DiCaprio for Warner Bros..


Salinger documentary film
On January 29, 2010, the website Deadline Hollywood broke an exclusive story and review of Salinger, a feature-length documentary about reclusive author J. D. Salinger that Salerno directed, produced and financed himself. The documentary was kept secret for five years. The film features interviews with 150 subjects including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Edward Norton, John Cusack, Danny DeVito, John Guare, Martin Sheen, David Milch, Robert Towne, Tom Wolfe, E. L. Doctorow, and Pulitzer Prize winners A. Scott Berg, Elizabeth Frank and Gore Vidal. Michael Fleming, the first journalist in the world to view the film, said Salerno's picture was "arrestingly powerful and exhaustively researched". Additionally, Fleming announced that Salerno had co-written a 700-page biography Salinger (book) with New York Times bestselling author David Shields.

On February 4, 2010, Entertainment Weekly released an article about the Salinger documentary that detailed the elaborate security protocol that was put into place to keep the film secret for five years.

In August 2010, Newsweek ran a lengthy profile of Salerno's documentary titled "Salinger Like You've Never Seen Him". Salerno allowed the magazine to publish a never-before-seen photo of Salinger from Salerno's film.

On January 26, 2011, Salerno spoke with Associated Press about his Salinger documentary and its expected fall 2012 release. "In the final analysis, what distinguishes our film and book project is access — access to Salinger's friends, colleagues and members of his inner circle that have never spoken on the record before as well as film footage, photographs and other material that has never been seen," Salerno said. "We take the viewer and reader inside J. D. Salinger's private world and shine light on a man named Jerry who lived in the shadow of the myth of J. D. Salinger".

On February 27, 2013, it was announced that Harvey Weinstein had acquired the documentary for theatrical distribution by his studio, The Weinstein Company, after being the only studio head to see the finished film after the 85th Academy Awards. The purchase is a seven-figure deal of $2 million. It does not include the television rights, which were sold to PBS' American Masters. The release date of September 6, 2013 was chosen for the film to be a candidate for the 86th Academy Awards.

The film received mixed reviews. USA Today called it "compelling, captivating and engrossing" and gave it 3 out of 4 stars. The film will premiere on American Masters as the program's 200th episode in January 2014.


Salinger book
Salinger, an oral biography by New York Times Bestselling authors David Shields and Shane Salerno published by Simon & Schuster on September 3, 2013. The book is an oral biographical portrait of reclusive, American author J. D. Salinger. The book explores Salinger’s entire life including his military service in World War II, his writing career, and his retreat from fame. Salinger narrows in on the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder on his life and work as well as his religious affiliations, and his relationships with teen girls.

Salinger debuted at #6 on the New York Times bestsellers list and stayed on the list for three weeks. It was #1 on the Los Angeles Times bestsellers list. Additionally, Salinger was named to the bestsellers lists for NPR, Independent Booksellers, and Barnes & Noble. Salinger was named the Amazon Best Book of the Month in September 2013. The book received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly and was chosen as the Book of the Month Club Selection and the History Book Club Selection for September 2013.

Salinger is the first book by author, screenwriter, and producer Shane Salerno. Salerno’s interest in J. D. Salinger began when he was a child. After reading all of Salinger’s published work, he learned that J. D. Salinger had retreated from public life to live in a rural town in New Hampshire, where he wrote everyday and vowed never to publish again.
Salerno began researching Salinger’s life and was fascinated by the details. Salerno started production on his documentary film Salinger (film) and quickly realized that there was simply too much information for one film. He decided to write a book and collaborated with PEN/Revson Award-winner David Shields.
Salinger is the product of ten years of research including over 200 hundred interviews with family, friends, lovers, military brothers-in-arms, neighbors, and professional colleagues. Interviews were conducted on five continents and hundreds of never-before-seen photographs and documents were discovered.

Published three years after J. D. Salinger’s death, Salinger chronicles the author’s life through the lens of his military service during World War II. The book explores the subjects of his writing, his relationships with friends and lovers, his marriages, his children, and his exploration of various religions. The book also examines the cultural impact of Salinger’s work including the use of his work by Mark David Chapman as justification for his assassination of John Lennon. Never-before-seen photographs, documents, and letters appear throughout the text and offer details of the author’s life that were previously unknown.

Scott Bowles, book critic for USA Today gave Salinger 3 ½ out of 4 stars writing “Salinger is a revelation, and offers the most complete picture of an American icon, a man deified by silence, haunted by war, frustrated in love—and more frail and human than he ever wanted the world to know.”
Tina Jordan of Entertainment Weekly wrote “The book feels as close as we'll ever get to being inside Salinger's head.”
Lev Grossman of Time magazine called Salinger “Vivid” and John Walsh of The Sunday Times (London) called Salinger “A stupendous work . . . I predict with the utmost confidence that, after this, the world will not need another Salinger biography.” Louis Bayard of the Washington Post wrote “Salinger is the thorny, complicated portrait that its thorny, complicated subject deserves. . . . The book offers the most complete rendering yet of Salinger’s World War II service, the transformative trauma that began with the D-Day invasion and carried through the horrific Battle of Hürtgen Forest and the liberation of a Dachau subcamp.” David Ulin of the Los Angeles Times wrote “Salinger gets the goods on an author's reclusive life. . . . It strips away the sheen of his exceptionalism, trading in his genius for something much more real.” Andrew Romano of the Daily Beast wrote “Salinger is full of fascinating revelations.”


Avatar sequel
On August 1, 2013, Deadline Hollywood, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and many other publications reported that 20th Century Fox and James Cameron would be making three sequels to Avatar and that Shane Salerno had been hired to co-write one of those sequels with Cameron: "Building upon the world we created with Avatar has been a rare and incredibly rewarding experience. In writing the new films, I've come to realize that Avatar's world, story and characters have become even richer than I anticipated, and it became apparent that two films would not be enough to capture everything I wanted to put on screen", Cameron was quoted saying via a press statement.

"And to help me continue to expand this universe, I'm pleased to bring aboard Amanda, Rick, Shane and Josh – all writers I've long admired – to join me in completing the films' screenplays", he added.

Best films

Armageddon (1998)
(Scriptwriter)
AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004)
(Scriptwriter)
Shaft (2000)
(Story)
Savages (2012)
(Scriptwriter)

Usually with

James Cameron
James Cameron
(2 films)
Joel Moore
Joel Moore
(3 films)
Oliver Stone
Oliver Stone
(1 films)
John Lennon
John Lennon
(1 films)
Source : Wikidata

Filmography of Shane Salerno (8 films)

Display filmography as list

Director

Scriptwriter

Savages
Savages (2012)
, 2h11
Directed by Oliver Stone
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Thriller, Crime
Themes Medical-themed films, Films about drugs, Films about sexuality
Actors Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively Reynolds, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, John Travolta, Benicio del Toro, Salma Hayek
Rating63% 3.199593.199593.199593.199593.19959
Best friends Chon (Taylor Kitsch) and Ben (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) are marijuana growers living in Laguna Beach, California. Chon, a former Navy SEAL, smuggled the seeds for the plants out of Afghanistan. They got help in cultivating them from Ben, a graduate of University of California, Berkeley in business and botany. These seeds yielded a particularly potent strain of marijuana that soon developed a wide customer base and made Chon and Ben very wealthy, and Ben began devoting time and money to doing charity work in Africa and Asia. They are both in a relationship with Ophelia Sage (Blake Lively).
Aliens vs Predator: Requiem, 1h34
Directed by Colin Strause
Origin USA
Genres Science fiction, Thriller, Fantasy, Action, Horror
Themes Space adventure films, Dans l'espace, Films about extraterrestrial life, Superhero films, Space opera, Children's films, Films about extraterrestrial life, Arme nucléaire
Actors Johnny Lewis, Steven Pasquale, Ariel Gade, Reiko Aylesworth, Sam Trammell, John Ortiz
Roles Auteur
Rating46% 2.306092.306092.306092.306092.30609
Following the events of Alien vs. Predator, a Predator ship is leaving Earth carrying Alien facehuggers, and the body of Scar, the Predator that defeated the Alien Queen. A chestburster erupts from Scar's body; it is a new creature that is a hybrid of both species. It quickly matures into an adult Predalien and starts killing all the Predators on the ship. A Predator's weapon fire punctures the hull and the ship crashes in the forest outside of Gunnison, Colorado.
AVP: Alien vs. Predator, 1h41
Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson
Origin USA
Genres Science fiction, Thriller, Action, Adventure, Horror
Themes Space adventure films, Dans l'espace, Films about extraterrestrial life, Superhero films, Space opera, Children's films, Films about extraterrestrial life
Actors Sanaa Lathan, Lance Henriksen, Raoul Bova, Ewen Bremner, Colin Salmon, Tommy Flanagan
Rating57% 2.851982.851982.851982.851982.85198
In 2004, a satellite detects a mysterious heat bloom beneath Bouvetøya, an island about one thousand miles off the coast of Antarctica. Wealthy industrialist Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen) discovers through thermal imaging that there is a pyramid buried 2000 feet beneath the ice. Weyland wants to claim it for his multinational communications company, Weyland Industries, and assembles a team of experts to go investigate. The team includes archaeologists, linguistic experts, drillers, mercenaries, and a guide named Alexa Woods (Sanaa Lathan).
Shaft
Shaft (2000)
, 1h40
Directed by John Singleton
Origin USA
Genres Thriller, Action, Adventure, Crime
Themes Medical-themed films, Films about drugs, Films about racism
Actors Samuel L. Jackson, Vanessa Williams, Jeffrey Wright, Christian Bale, Richard Roundtree, Pat Hingle
Roles Story
Rating60% 3.000013.000013.000013.000013.00001
NYPD Detective John Shaft (Samuel L. Jackson) is called in to investigate the racially motivated murder of Trey Howard (Mekhi Phifer), committed by Walter Wade, Jr. (Christian Bale), the son of a wealthy real estate tycoon. Shaft briefly meets a potential eyewitness to the murder, Diane Palmieri (Toni Collette), but she disappears soon after and cannot be found for the trial. Wade is released on bail and flees to Switzerland.
Armageddon
Armageddon (1998)
, 2h25
Directed by Michael Bay
Origin USA
Genres Science fiction, Thriller, Action, Adventure
Themes Space adventure films, La fin du monde, Films about religion, Dans l'espace, Films set in the future, Political films, Dystopian films, Impact events in fiction, Space opera, Disaster films, American disaster films
Actors Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Ben Affleck, Will Patton, Keith David
Rating67% 3.350823.350823.350823.350823.35082
A massive meteor shower destroys the orbiting Space Shuttle Atlantis and bombards a swath of land from America's East Coast from South Carolina through Finland. NASA discovers that a rogue asteroid the size of Texas passed through the asteroid belt and pushed forward a large amount of space debris. The asteroid will collide with Earth in 18 days, causing an extinction event that will even wipe out bacteria. NASA scientists, led by Dan Truman, plan to trigger a nuclear detonation 800 feet (240 m) inside the asteroid to split it in two, driving the pieces apart so both will fly past the Earth. NASA contacts Harry Stamper, considered the best deep-sea oil driller in the world, for assistance. Harry travels to NASA with his daughter Grace, to keep her away from her new boyfriend and one of Harry's drillers, A. J. Frost. Harry explains he will need his team, including A. J., to carry out the mission. They agree to help, but only after their list of unusual rewards and demands are met.
()

Roles Writer

Producer

Savages
Savages (2012)
, 2h11
Directed by Oliver Stone
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Thriller, Crime
Themes Medical-themed films, Films about drugs, Films about sexuality
Actors Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively Reynolds, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, John Travolta, Benicio del Toro, Salma Hayek
Roles Executive Producer
Rating63% 3.199593.199593.199593.199593.19959
Best friends Chon (Taylor Kitsch) and Ben (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) are marijuana growers living in Laguna Beach, California. Chon, a former Navy SEAL, smuggled the seeds for the plants out of Afghanistan. They got help in cultivating them from Ben, a graduate of University of California, Berkeley in business and botany. These seeds yielded a particularly potent strain of marijuana that soon developed a wide customer base and made Chon and Ben very wealthy, and Ben began devoting time and money to doing charity work in Africa and Asia. They are both in a relationship with Ophelia Sage (Blake Lively).