John D. Brancato

Screenwriter John D. Brancato has worked exclusively with his creative partner, Michael Ferris, since the pair were studying at Harvard University; they met at the Harvard Lampoon, the long-running comedy institution where both served terms as president. Upon leaving the halls of academe, Brancato and Ferris served in a different institute of higher learning, working for exploitation master Roger Corman in the early 1990s. Under the shared pseudonym Henry Dominic, Brancato and Ferris wrote several low-budget scripts for Corman and other producers of direct-to-video quickies. The '95 thriller "The Net," a conspiracy yarn starring Sandra Bullock, was the duo's first high-profile script, benefiting from being one of the first films to use the Internet as a major plot point. Brancato and Ferris gained greater artistic credibility when director David Fincher--in between "Seven" and "Fight Club"--filmed their mind-bending puzzle, "The Game." Following a diversion into television, in which they created a short-lived series based on "The Net" and a ratings-challenged science-fiction cult favorite called "The Others," Brancato and Ferris resurrected a long-dormant action franchise with 2003's "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" and its sequel, 2009's "Terminator Salvation." Unfortunately, the Halle Berry comic-book bomb "Catwoman" and the crocodile-hunting action drama "Primeval," which they were involved with between the two "Terminator" films, were neither as commercially nor as critically successful.