Ken Nolan () is an American screenwriter and novelist best known for adapting the 2001

biographical A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or ...

war film War film is a film genre concerned with warfare, typically about naval, air, or land battles, with combat scenes central to the drama. It has been strongly associated with the 20th century. The fateful nature of battle scenes means that war fi ...

''Black Hawk Down'' from the non-fiction book of the same name.

Life and career

Nolan was born in Detroit and raised in

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from South ...

and

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

. He applied twice to the

UCLA Film School The UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television (UCLA TFT), is one of the 12 schools within the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) located in Los Angeles, California. Its creation was groundbreaking in that it was the first time a leadi ...

but was turned down both times. He ultimately attended the

University of Oregon The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a public research university in Eugene, Oregon. Founded in 1876, the institution is well known for its strong ties to the sports apparel and marketing firm Nike, Inc, and its co-founder, billion ...

, earning an English degree. He moved to Los Angeles, California in the early 1990s to pursue a career as a screenwriter, working at

Richard Dreyfuss Richard Stephen Dreyfuss (; born Dreyfus; October 29, 1947) is an American actor. He is known for starring in popular films during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, including ''American Graffiti'' (1973), ''Jaws'' (1975), ''Close Encounters of the T ...

' company using ''The Screenwriter's Workbook'' by

Syd Field Sydney Alvin Field (December 19, 1935November 17, 2013) was an American author and speaker who wrote several books on screenwriting, the first being '' Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting'' (Dell Publishing, 1979). He led workshops and s ...

as a guide. He wrote several screenplays before breaking through in 1994, writing a series of spec scripts for

Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...

and

Universal Pictures Universal Pictures (legally Universal City Studios LLC, also known as Universal Studios, or simply Universal; common metonym: Uni, and formerly named Universal Film Manufacturing Company and Universal-International Pictures Inc.) is an Ameri ...

. His first produced screenplay was an adaptation of

Mark Bowden Mark Robert Bowden (; born July 17, 1951) is an American journalist and writer. He is a national correspondent for ''The Atlantic''. He is best known for his book ''Black Hawk Down (book), Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War'' (1999) about th ...

's 1999 non-fiction book ''Black Hawk Down'', which was ultimately made into an

Academy Award The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...

-winning film of the same name by

Ridley Scott Sir Ridley Scott (born 30 November 1937) is a British film director and producer. Directing, among others, science fiction films, his work is known for its atmospheric and highly concentrated visual style. Scott has received many accolades thr ...

. He initially wrote a 60-page treatment and writing a total of eight drafts before Scott was attached to the project by producer

Jerry Bruckheimer Jerome Leon Bruckheimer (born September 21, 1943) is an American film and television Film producer, producer. He has been active in the genres of Action film, action, Drama film, drama, Fantasy film, fantasy, and Science fiction film, science fi ...

. Nolan was one of several writers (including

Steven Zaillian Steven Ernest Bernard Zaillian (born January 30, 1953) is an American screenwriter, film director and producer. He won an Academy Awards, Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA Award for his screenplay ''Schindler's List'' (1993) and has ...

Stephen Gaghan Stephen Gaghan (; born May 6, 1965) is an American screenwriter and director. He is noted for writing the screenplay for Steven Soderbergh's film ''Traffic'', based on a Channel 4 series, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Scr ...

Eric Roth Eric R. Roth (born March 22, 1945) is an American screenwriter. He has been nominated six times for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay — for ''Forrest Gump'' (1994), '' The Insider'' (1999), ''Munich'' (2005), '' The Curious Case o ...

) who contributed to the final shooting script, though he was the only one to receive on-screen credit. Nolan's next major project was the

TNT Trinitrotoluene (), more commonly known as TNT, more specifically 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene, and by its preferred IUPAC name 2-methyl-1,3,5-trinitrobenzene, is a chemical compound with the formula C6H2(NO2)3CH3. TNT is occasionally used as a reagen ...

miniseries A miniseries or mini-series is a television series that tells a story in a predetermined, limited number of episodes. "Limited series" is another more recent US term which is sometimes used interchangeably. , the popularity of miniseries format h ...

''The Company'', for which he received a Writers Guild of America Award for Television: Long Form – Adapted. In early 2015, he published his first novel, ''The Spawn''. He replaced

Ehren Kruger Ehren Kruger (born October 5, 1972) is an American film screenwriter and producer. He is best known for writing three of the five installments in the original ''Transformers'' film series: '' Revenge of the Fallen'', '' Dark of the Moon'', and ' ...

as the writer of the ''Transformers'' film series, penning the latest entry '' Transformers: The Last Knight'' and the as-yet untitled spin-off film. Nolan wrote ''Only the Brave'', a 2017

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...

which, like ''Black Hawk Down'', is a work of historical fiction based on true events.

Works

Film

* ''Black Hawk Down'' (2001) * '' Transformers: The Last Knight'' (2017) * ''Only the Brave'' (2017)

Television

* ''The Company'' (2007)

Print

* ''The Spawn'' (2015)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Nolan, Ken Writers from Los Angeles Living people Year of birth missing (living people) People from Detroit American male screenwriters American male novelists 21st-century American novelists Writers Guild of America Award winners 21st-century American male writers Screenwriters from California 21st-century American screenwriters