Mike Werb

About Mike

• Visiting Assistant Professor

Biography

A Los Angeles native, Mike Werb attended Stanford, where he majored in one thing after another. He put his costly education to use by joining a New Wave garage band that never left the garage. Turning to writing, he began a burlesque climb up the well-greased Hollywood ladder by entering the UCLA Master’s program in screenwriting. He has since worked for every major studio.

Mike’s big break was writing the screenplay for the Jim Carrey comedy “The Mask,” but he also embraces his other produced credits, including “Darkman 3: Die, Darkman, Die!” and the giant-rats-attack-a-college-campus epic “Gnaw: The Food of the Gods, Part 2.”

Mike co-wrote and co-produced (with Michael Colleary) the action-thriller “Face/Off,” directed by John Woo and starring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage. The New York Times lauded the Oscar-nominated film as “one the 1,000 greatest movies of all time,” and “Face/Off” won the 1997 Best Screenplay statuette at the 24th annual Saturn Awards.

More recent accomplishments include being one of six credited screenwriters on “Lara Croft, Tomb: Raider” starring Angelina Jolie, and the WB’s flashy flop TV series “Tarzan” starring Travis Fimmel’s abs. Werb and Colleary also worked intimately with Arnold Schwarzenegger on “Collateral Damage,” his last major motion picture before becoming Governor of California.

2006-7 film credits include the well-reviewed animated hit “Curious George” (Universal/Imagine) and the vastly underrated “Firehouse Dog” (New Regency/Fox).

Werb and Colleary are developing “Prohets of the Ghost Ants” with author Clark Carlton and Lawrence Bender/A Band Apart. In post-production is an adaptation of the best-selling arena fighting video game “Tekken” (Crystal Sky/Screen Gems).

Mike is currently writing the nano-tech based action series “Flyswatters” for Sony TV and the Sci-Fi Channel which he will executive produce with Darren Star (“Sex and the City”).

Mike is a nominating-committee member of the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror — and an active member of both the Writer’s Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Mike is currently working on an action pilot “Unnatural History,” that goes into production in June for the Cartoon Network. He will executive produce, through Warner Horizons Television. Here’s the PR release from last week:

“An action-packed blend of science, western culture, eastern philosophy and martial arts, Unnatural History is an urban adventure series centered around Henry Griffin, a teenager with exceptional skills acquired through years of globe-trotting with his anthropologist parents. But Henry faces his biggest challenge of all when he moves back to America to attend a high school stranger than any place he’s ever lived before.”