Biography

Richard Christian Matheson was born on October 14, 1953 in Santa Monica, California, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for Chemistry (2011), Amazing Stories (1985) and Knight Rider (1982).

Son of famed writer Richard Matheson, and older brother of Chris Matheson and Ali Marie Matheson.

He is a prolific horror and fantasy short story and book author, in addition to being a Hollywood script writer. His writings are being collected and preserved, along with the writings of his same-named father, at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

Occasionally mistaken for his brother Chris Matheson, who wrote Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989).

Of Norwegian decent.

Brother-in-law of Jon Cooksey.

On writing with his father, Richard Matheson: The first was a script called Face-Off, which ultimately became 'Loose Cannons'. It was about a veteran police detective who gets partnered with this younger detective who's a brilliant criminologist with multiple personality disorder. That was the central idea of the movie: He was brilliant as a partner, but almost impossible to deal with because you never knew when he was going to splinter off into a new, bizarre personality. We wrote the script, sold it. It went through a succession of creative teams, ultimately ended up being made with Gene Hackman and Dan Aykroyd. The central idea remained, but the studio bloated it into an incomprehensible, big-budget mess. They run it on television a lot and I watch it here and there. Hackman, is great. Aykroyd has moments. We distanced ourselves, kind of said, "F-ck it." Immediately wrote another spec script, sold it to Richard Donner. Another to Ivan Reitman.