Thomas Lee Wright
- Producer
- Writer
- Director
Thomas Lee Wright is an Academy Award and Emmy-nominated filmmaker known for his feature films and documentaries.
He began his career as a story editor at Walt Disney and Columbia Pictures and as a creative executive at Paramount where he worked on such films as "48 Hours", "Trading Places" and "Flashdance" before writing a draft of "The Godfather, Part Three" - his first studio writing assignment.
As a screenwriter, he has worked for every major studio. Among his many projects, he wrote the original story and co-wrote the screenplay for the Warner Brothers hit "New Jack City" (Wesley Snipes, Chris Rock, Ice-T) which the New York Times called "an urban classic" upon the 25th anniversary of its premiere.
As a director, he made the prize-winning Discovery Channel documentary "Eight-Tray Gangster: The Making of a Crip", exploring L.A.'s 1992 Uprising from a gang member's perspective. He wrote and produced "Trade Off", an activist's chronicle of turn-of-the-century WTO 'Battle in Seattle' protests, which won SIFF's Golden Space Needle Award and toured internationally with Human Rights Watch.
Wright developed the book and screenplay for Amazon Studio's "Last Flag Flying" (Bryan Cranston, Steve Carell, Laurence Fishburne), and executive produced this sequel to "The Last Detail" from a novel by Darryl Ponicsan. Directed by Richard Linklater, the film was chosen to be the opening night selection of the New York Film Festival and earned Laurence Fishburne an NAACP Image Award nod.
Wright received an Academy Award nomination for producing "Edith+Eddie", a love story about America's oldest interracial newlyweds, directed by Laura Checkoway. The film was awarded Best Short of the year by the International Documentary Association, and also earned an Emmy nod after airing in NBC's 'Meet the Press' film festival, among other honors.
As an author, Wright co-wrote a pair of books about filmmaking - "Working in Hollywood", an oral history of the movies from the POV of workers behind-the-scenes, and "American Screenwriters", a collection of interviews with top writers like James Cameron, Shane Black, Callie Khouri and John Singleton among others, discussing the art and business of their craft.
He is an honors graduate of Harvard University and studied Irish theater as a Rotary Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin. In the non-profit realm, he has served as a Trustee for the Seattle Repertory Theater, Stanley Ann Dunham Scholarship Fund and Seattle International Film Festival.
He began his career as a story editor at Walt Disney and Columbia Pictures and as a creative executive at Paramount where he worked on such films as "48 Hours", "Trading Places" and "Flashdance" before writing a draft of "The Godfather, Part Three" - his first studio writing assignment.
As a screenwriter, he has worked for every major studio. Among his many projects, he wrote the original story and co-wrote the screenplay for the Warner Brothers hit "New Jack City" (Wesley Snipes, Chris Rock, Ice-T) which the New York Times called "an urban classic" upon the 25th anniversary of its premiere.
As a director, he made the prize-winning Discovery Channel documentary "Eight-Tray Gangster: The Making of a Crip", exploring L.A.'s 1992 Uprising from a gang member's perspective. He wrote and produced "Trade Off", an activist's chronicle of turn-of-the-century WTO 'Battle in Seattle' protests, which won SIFF's Golden Space Needle Award and toured internationally with Human Rights Watch.
Wright developed the book and screenplay for Amazon Studio's "Last Flag Flying" (Bryan Cranston, Steve Carell, Laurence Fishburne), and executive produced this sequel to "The Last Detail" from a novel by Darryl Ponicsan. Directed by Richard Linklater, the film was chosen to be the opening night selection of the New York Film Festival and earned Laurence Fishburne an NAACP Image Award nod.
Wright received an Academy Award nomination for producing "Edith+Eddie", a love story about America's oldest interracial newlyweds, directed by Laura Checkoway. The film was awarded Best Short of the year by the International Documentary Association, and also earned an Emmy nod after airing in NBC's 'Meet the Press' film festival, among other honors.
As an author, Wright co-wrote a pair of books about filmmaking - "Working in Hollywood", an oral history of the movies from the POV of workers behind-the-scenes, and "American Screenwriters", a collection of interviews with top writers like James Cameron, Shane Black, Callie Khouri and John Singleton among others, discussing the art and business of their craft.
He is an honors graduate of Harvard University and studied Irish theater as a Rotary Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin. In the non-profit realm, he has served as a Trustee for the Seattle Repertory Theater, Stanley Ann Dunham Scholarship Fund and Seattle International Film Festival.
