Danny Bilson
Encyclopedia
Daniel "Danny" Bilson is an American writer, director, and producer of movies, television, videogames, and comic books. With his writing partner Paul DeMeo, Danny Bilson wrote the movie The Rocketeer
(1991), the video game James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing
(2003), the television series The Sentinel
(1996), Viper
(1994, 1996) and The Flash
(1990), and issues of the comic book The Flash. Bilson also directed and produced The Sentinel and The Flash.
Bilson's scope has been characterized as transmedia. He has adapted comic books into movies (The Rocketeer), comic books into television (The Flash), and movies into video games (James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing). Bilson and DeMeo's writing has tended toward action and science fiction genres.
, the son of Mona Weichman and the director Bruce Bilson
(Bewitched
, Get Smart
, Hogan's Heroes
).
His daughter, Rachel Bilson
(born on August 25, 1981) is an actress, notable for her role in The O.C.
. He has two other daughters, Hattie Elizabeth Bilson, born December 19, 2001, and Rosemary, born February 10, 2007.
. There he met and teamed up with long-time writing partner Paul DeMeo, and together they formed Pet Fly productions.
(1985), a noir
tale about a time-travelling
detective
from the future. This cult hit spawned five sequels, to which Bilson and DeMeo contributed some writing.
soldiers who find an alien spacecraft. Danny shot Zone Troopers for $600,000 in Italy. Following this, the duo performed the same roles in The Wrong Guys (1988) a comedic spoof of boy scouting.
(1991). Writing for Disney, the partners were hired and fired several times during the five years of movie development. The two had a rough executive experience, in which scenes were deleted only to be restored years later. The film finally made it to theaters and was heralded by Entertainment Weekly as the best comic book adaptation to film.
(2000).
with actor Adam Brody
(who was dating Bilson's daughter Rachel at the time). They are currently writing a new mini-series for Wildstorm Comics named Red Menace
.
Around this time, Bilson also began teaching, after being encouraged to do so by his friend and World of Warcraft
guildmate, Bing Gordon
. Bilson is an adjunct professor at USC School of Cinematic Arts
, where he teaches traditional screenwriting, as well as character development and storytelling for video games.
He recently courted controversy when he referred to the Wii as a "Monopoly box in a closet". This was despite selling over 700,000 copies of De Blob and 1.2 million copies of Big Beach Sports on the platform.
Bilson claimed that "there is so much junk on the Wii that if you add up all the numbers of those hundreds of SKUs, I'm sure you can cough up some number that's impressive". According to Metacritic, THQ have released only one game on the Wii with an average score higher than 80% (De Blob). Their best-selling title on the system has an average score of 44% (Big Beach Sports). Their other titles include All Star Cheer Squad 2, Merv Griffin's Crosswords and Bratz: The Movie.
The Rocketeer (film)
The Rocketeer is a 1991 period superhero adventure film produced by Walt Disney Pictures and based on the character of the same name created by comic book writer/artist Dave Stevens. Directed by Joe Johnston, the film stars Billy Campbell, Jennifer Connelly, Alan Arkin, Timothy Dalton, Paul Sorvino...
(1991), the video game James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing
James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing
007: Everything or Nothing is a third-person shooter video game, where the player controls James Bond. Bond is modeled after and voiced by the former James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan, making it his final performance for the character in game and film...
(2003), the television series The Sentinel
The Sentinel (TV series)
The Sentinel is a Canadian-produced television series that aired on UPN in the United States from 1996 to 1999. It premiered on March 20, 1996, and ran for 65 episodes . The series later reaired on Syfy.-Plot and characters:...
(1996), Viper
Viper (TV series)
Viper is an action-adventure TV series about a special task force set up by the federal government to fight crime in the fictional city of Metro City, California that is perpetually under siege from one crime wave after another. The weapon used by this task force is an assault vehicle that...
(1994, 1996) and The Flash
The Flash (TV series)
The Flash is a 1990 American television series that starred John Wesley Shipp as the superhero, the Flash , and co-starred Amanda Pays. The series was developed from the DC Comics characters by the writing team of Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo, and produced by their company, Pet Fly Productions, in...
(1990), and issues of the comic book The Flash. Bilson also directed and produced The Sentinel and The Flash.
Bilson's scope has been characterized as transmedia. He has adapted comic books into movies (The Rocketeer), comic books into television (The Flash), and movies into video games (James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing). Bilson and DeMeo's writing has tended toward action and science fiction genres.
Personal life
Bilson was born in Los Angeles, CaliforniaLos Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
, the son of Mona Weichman and the director Bruce Bilson
Bruce Bilson
Bruce Bilson is an American film and television director. He is the grandfather of the actress Rachel Bilson.Bilson was born in Brooklyn, New York City to Jewish parents. His mother, Hattie Bilson , was an American screenwriter, and his father, George Bilson, was an English-born...
(Bewitched
Bewitched
Bewitched is an American situation comedy originally broadcast for eight seasons on ABC from 1964 to 1972, starring Elizabeth Montgomery, Dick York and Dick Sargent , Agnes Moorehead, and David White. The show is about a witch who marries a mortal and tries to lead the life of a typical suburban...
, Get Smart
Get Smart
Get Smart is an American comedy television series that satirizes the secret agent genre. Created by Mel Brooks with Buck Henry, the show starred Don Adams , Barbara Feldon , and Edward Platt...
, Hogan's Heroes
Hogan's Heroes
Hogan's Heroes is an American television sitcom that ran for 168 episodes from September 17, 1965, to March 28, 1971, on the CBS network. The show was set in a German prisoner of war camp during the Second World War. Bob Crane had the starring role as Colonel Robert E...
).
His daughter, Rachel Bilson
Rachel Bilson
Rachel Sarah Bilson is an American actress. Bilson grew up in a California show business family, and made her television debut in 2003, subsequently becoming well known for playing Summer Roberts on the prime time drama series The O.C. Bilson made her film debut in the 2006 film The Last Kiss and...
(born on August 25, 1981) is an actress, notable for her role in The O.C.
The O.C.
The O.C. is an American teen drama television series that originally aired on the Fox television network in the United States from August 5, 2003, to February 21, 2007, running a total of four seasons...
. He has two other daughters, Hattie Elizabeth Bilson, born December 19, 2001, and Rosemary, born February 10, 2007.
Adapting comics to movies (1985–1991)
Bilson graduated from California State University, San BernardinoCalifornia State University, San Bernardino
California State University, San Bernardino, also known as Cal State San Bernardino or CSUSB is a public research university and one of the twenty three general campuses of the California State University system. The main campus sits on in the suburban University District of , United States, with...
. There he met and teamed up with long-time writing partner Paul DeMeo, and together they formed Pet Fly productions.
Trancers
After college, Bilson struggled to break into the movie business, working as an extra while writing screenplays. Bilson and DeMeo produced their first script, TrancersTrancers
Trancers is a 1985 science fiction film. It was directed by Charles Band and stars Tim Thomerson and Helen Hunt. It is the first film in a series of six: Trancers , and the direct-to-video releases; Trancers II , Trancers III , Trancers 4: Jack of Swords , Trancers 5: Sudden Deth and Trancers 6...
(1985), a noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
tale about a time-travelling
Time travel
Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
detective
Detective
A detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators or "private eyes"...
from the future. This cult hit spawned five sequels, to which Bilson and DeMeo contributed some writing.
Zone Troopers
Bilson debuted as a director for Zone Troopers (1985), co-written by DeMeo, a tale of American World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
soldiers who find an alien spacecraft. Danny shot Zone Troopers for $600,000 in Italy. Following this, the duo performed the same roles in The Wrong Guys (1988) a comedic spoof of boy scouting.
The Rocketeer
Bilson and DeMeo then began their comic book adaptation of The RocketeerThe Rocketeer
The Rocketeer is a superhero created by writer/illustrator Dave Stevens. The character first appeared in 1982 and is a homage to the Saturday matinee heroes of the 1930s and 1940s....
(1991). Writing for Disney, the partners were hired and fired several times during the five years of movie development. The two had a rough executive experience, in which scenes were deleted only to be restored years later. The film finally made it to theaters and was heralded by Entertainment Weekly as the best comic book adaptation to film.
The Sims
Bilson was a consulting producer to Electronic Arts for the video game The SimsThe Sims
The Sims is a strategic life-simulation computer game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. Its development was led by game designer Will Wright, also known for developing SimCity...
(2000).
Medal of Honor
Bilson got a "Special Thanks" credit on Medal of Honor: Allied Assault.Transmedia (2004 onward)
Bilson and DeMeo left Electronic Arts to pursue their own transmedia intellectual property. The two, having successfully carried intellectual property from comic book to screen and from screen to video game, conceived new characters and stories that would succeed in multiple media.The Flash and Red Menace
Bilson and DeMeo returned to writing comics, co-writing The Flash: Fastest Man Alive for DC ComicsDC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
with actor Adam Brody
Adam Brody
Adam Jared Brody is an American film and television actor and part time musician. He began his career in 1995, appearing on Gilmore Girls and other series, and subsequently came to fame for his role as Seth Cohen on The O.C. Brody later appeared in several film roles, including Mr. & Mrs...
(who was dating Bilson's daughter Rachel at the time). They are currently writing a new mini-series for Wildstorm Comics named Red Menace
Red Menace (comics)
Red Menace is a six issue American comic book limited series published in 2007 by Wildstorm Productions.The setting of this story is Los Angeles in 1953 at the time of Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee trials.-Plot summary:...
.
Around this time, Bilson also began teaching, after being encouraged to do so by his friend and World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994...
guildmate, Bing Gordon
Bing Gordon
William "Bing" Gordon is an executive in the video game industry. He served ten years as Chief Creative Officer of video game publisher and developer Electronic Arts prior to his current partnership with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers...
. Bilson is an adjunct professor at USC School of Cinematic Arts
USC School of Cinematic Arts
The USC School of Cinematic Arts, until 2006 named the School of Cinema-Television , is a film school within the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California. It is the oldest and largest such school in the United States, established in 1929 as a joint venture with the Academy of...
, where he teaches traditional screenwriting, as well as character development and storytelling for video games.
THQ
Bilson has said that he is planning to "green-light more Wii games: family, casual, get everyone on the couch games. I'm a big believer in that." He continued, "Right now, we're not moving hardcore stuff to the Wii. We were; we stopped it, just because we're a little risk-averse".He recently courted controversy when he referred to the Wii as a "Monopoly box in a closet". This was despite selling over 700,000 copies of De Blob and 1.2 million copies of Big Beach Sports on the platform.
Bilson claimed that "there is so much junk on the Wii that if you add up all the numbers of those hundreds of SKUs, I'm sure you can cough up some number that's impressive". According to Metacritic, THQ have released only one game on the Wii with an average score higher than 80% (De Blob). Their best-selling title on the system has an average score of 44% (Big Beach Sports). Their other titles include All Star Cheer Squad 2, Merv Griffin's Crosswords and Bratz: The Movie.
Selected works
Some of Danny Bilson's works in movies, television, videogames, and comic books, as quoted from the [Internet Movie Database].Filmography
- TrancersTrancersTrancers is a 1985 science fiction film. It was directed by Charles Band and stars Tim Thomerson and Helen Hunt. It is the first film in a series of six: Trancers , and the direct-to-video releases; Trancers II , Trancers III , Trancers 4: Jack of Swords , Trancers 5: Sudden Deth and Trancers 6...
(1985) - Zone TroopersZone TroopersZone Troopers is a 1985 science fiction film, directed by Danny Bilson and starring Tim Thomerson. The original music score was composed by Richard Band.-Plot:...
(1986) - The Wrong GuysThe Wrong GuysThe Wrong Guys is a 1988 American comedy film directed by Danny Bilson.-Plot:Thirty years ago Louie Anderson was the leader of a group of Cub Scouts, Den 7: "The Owl Patrol", consisting of himself, neurotic Richard, ladies man Belz, smooth talking Franklin and surfer dude Tim...
(1988) - The RocketeerThe Rocketeer (film)The Rocketeer is a 1991 period superhero adventure film produced by Walt Disney Pictures and based on the character of the same name created by comic book writer/artist Dave Stevens. Directed by Joe Johnston, the film stars Billy Campbell, Jennifer Connelly, Alan Arkin, Timothy Dalton, Paul Sorvino...
(1991)
Television
- The FlashThe Flash (TV series)The Flash is a 1990 American television series that starred John Wesley Shipp as the superhero, the Flash , and co-starred Amanda Pays. The series was developed from the DC Comics characters by the writing team of Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo, and produced by their company, Pet Fly Productions, in...
(1990) - ViperViper (TV series)Viper is an action-adventure TV series about a special task force set up by the federal government to fight crime in the fictional city of Metro City, California that is perpetually under siege from one crime wave after another. The weapon used by this task force is an assault vehicle that...
(1994, 1996) - The SentinelThe Sentinel (TV series)The Sentinel is a Canadian-produced television series that aired on UPN in the United States from 1996 to 1999. It premiered on March 20, 1996, and ran for 65 episodes . The series later reaired on Syfy.-Plot and characters:...
(1996)
Games
- The SimsThe SimsThe Sims is a strategic life-simulation computer game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. Its development was led by game designer Will Wright, also known for developing SimCity...
(2000) - 007: Agent Under Fire (2001)
- Medal of Honor: FrontlineMedal of Honor: Frontline-External links:*...
(2002) - 007: Nightfire (2002)
- Medal of Honor: Rising SunMedal of Honor: Rising SunMedal of Honor: Rising Sun is the fifth installment of the Medal of Honor series, released by Electronic Arts in November 2003. Like its predecessors, Rising Sun is a first-person shooter set in World War II. Unlike predecessors,Rising Sun is set during the Pacific War. It features single-player...
(2003) - James Bond 007: Everything or NothingJames Bond 007: Everything or Nothing007: Everything or Nothing is a third-person shooter video game, where the player controls James Bond. Bond is modeled after and voiced by the former James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan, making it his final performance for the character in game and film...
(2003) - GoldenEye: Rogue AgentGoldenEye: Rogue AgentGoldenEye: Rogue Agent is a 2004 action-adventure Science-Fiction First-Person Shooter video game, developed and published by Electronic Arts. Despite it is set in an alternate timeline of James Bond universe, the player takes the role of an ex-MI6 agent who is recruited by Auric Goldfinger, a...
(2004) - HomefrontHomefront (video game)Homefront is a first-person shooter video game developed by now defunct Kaos Studios and published by THQ, in which players play as members of a resistance movement fighting against a near-future Korean military occupation of the United States. The story was written by John Milius, who co-wrote...
(2011)
Comics
- The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive (2007)
- Red MenaceRed Menace (comics)Red Menace is a six issue American comic book limited series published in 2007 by Wildstorm Productions.The setting of this story is Los Angeles in 1953 at the time of Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee trials.-Plot summary:...
(2007)
Award nominations
- The RocketeerThe Rocketeer (film)The Rocketeer is a 1991 period superhero adventure film produced by Walt Disney Pictures and based on the character of the same name created by comic book writer/artist Dave Stevens. Directed by Joe Johnston, the film stars Billy Campbell, Jennifer Connelly, Alan Arkin, Timothy Dalton, Paul Sorvino...
nominated for Best Dramatic Presentation, Hugo Awards 1991. - The SentinelThe Sentinel (TV series)The Sentinel is a Canadian-produced television series that aired on UPN in the United States from 1996 to 1999. It premiered on March 20, 1996, and ran for 65 episodes . The series later reaired on Syfy.-Plot and characters:...
nominated for Outstanding Directing - Science fiction, 5th RATTY Awards (1998-1999). - Rocketeer Adventure MagazineThe RocketeerThe Rocketeer is a superhero created by writer/illustrator Dave Stevens. The character first appeared in 1982 and is a homage to the Saturday matinee heroes of the 1930s and 1940s....
#1 nominated for Best Story or Single Issue, 1989 Harvey Award Nominees and Winners.
External links
- Danny Bilson at Moby Games
- Danny Bilson at University of Southern CaliforniaUniversity of Southern CaliforniaThe University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
- Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo interview by DVD Verdict
- Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo interview by SciFi Channel
- PetFly Productions Podcasts