Dan Wigutow(1942-2026)

Dan Wigutow is best known for the high quality true crime programming he brought to television. His Award winning and Emmy nominated mini- series include "Fatal Vision" "Blind Faith" "In a Child's Name" "The Hunt for the Unicorn Killer" and "In the Best of Families." His transition into television from feature films began in 1984 with "Fatal Vision" a film based on the best seller of the same name by Joe McGinniss. Following the adaptation of the McGinnis book, he went on to adapt other works by McGinnis and Peter Maas with the same success. His adaptation of Peter Benchley's "The Beast" was one of NBC's highest rated mini series.

His filmography includes one of the first films to portray sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and it's consequences within a small southern community - "Judgment" for HBO, starred Keith Carradine and Blythe Danner and won the Writers Guild Award for Best TV Drama in 1990. His most recent work includes Hallmark's first scripted series "Cedar Cove" a small town story with with Andie MacDowell as the presiding judge; and in 2018 the Hallmark Hall of Fame film "The Beach House" also with Andie MacDowell.

Wigutow's first feature film was the neo-noir thriller "Last Embrace" directed by Jonathan Demme. The film starred Roy Scheider and Janet Margolin and told the story of a haunted secret agent. His subsequent feature credits include "The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper" with Robert Duvall and Treat Williams, a story of the infamous unidentified plane hijacker who escaped with hundreds of thousands of dollars, and "Heaven Help Us" with Donald Sutherland, Patrick Dempsey, and Mary Stuart Masterson, the story of a Catholic boys school during the changing time of Vatican 2.

Wigutow branched out earlier in his career to travel in China with opera superstar, Luciano Pavarotti, to produce the feature documentary, "Distant Harmony: Pavarotti in China" which was re-released in 2019.