David Koepp

David Koepp is an American screenwriter and director whose scripts helped define Hollywood’s modern blockbuster era. Born in Pewaukee, Wisconsin, on June 9, 1963, he studied at UCLA’s film school before building a career across thrillers, science fiction, adventure, and horror. His writing is closely associated with high-concept stories that must also solve practical problems of pace, suspense, exposition, and spectacle. Koepp wrote the screenplay for Jurassic Park (1993), adapting Michael Crichton’s novel with Crichton. Steven Spielberg’s film follows a disastrous preview of a dinosaur theme park on Isla Nublar, where cloned animals escape containment. Koepp returned to Crichton’s world for The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), again credited alongside the novelist. He also wrote Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (2005), an adaptation of H. G. Wells’s invasion novel, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008). His credits include Brian De Palma’s Mission: Impossible (1996), whose team infiltrations and double-crosses launched the film series; David Fincher’s Panic Room (2002), about a mother and daughter trapped in a fortified Manhattan room while intruders seek a missing fortune; and Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man (2002). The latter introduced Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker as he gains spider-like abilities and faces Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin. Koepp has repeatedly adapted major authors. He wrote the screenplay for Death Becomes Her (1992), Robert Zemeckis’s dark comedy in which two rivals use a miraculous potion and discover its grotesque price. For Carlito’s Way (1993), he adapted Edwin Torres’s novel about a former criminal attempting to leave New York’s drug world. His screenplay for Stir of Echoes (1999), which he also directed, drew on Richard Matheson’s novel and centers on a Chicago man troubled by visions after hypnosis. As a director, Koepp has made films from his own or adapted scripts. Secret Window (2004), starring Johnny Depp, adapts Stephen King’s novella “Secret Window, Secret Garden” and concerns a writer accused of plagiarism by a menacing stranger. Ghost Town (2008) casts Ricky Gervais as a dentist who begins seeing ghosts after a near-death experience. Premium Rush (2012), co-written with John Kamps and directed by Koepp, turns a Manhattan bicycle courier’s delivery into a chase involving a corrupt police officer. Outside cinema, Koepp wrote the novels Cold Storage (2019) and Aurora (2022). Cold Storage follows efforts to contain a lethal organism released from a former military site; Aurora imagines a solar storm disrupting modern civilization. His published fiction extends a career spanning studio franchises and original suspense narratives.