Oscar Sharp is a BAFTA-nominated British filmmaker best known for short films The Kármán Line, Sign Language and Sunspring, and upcoming television series The Human Conditions for

HBO MAX HBO Max is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in the United States on May 27, 2020, the service is built around the libraries of HBO, Warner Bros., Cartoon Netw ...

Work

In 2010

Sign Language Sign languages (also known as signed languages) are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulation in combination with non-manual markers. Sign l ...

, about an idealistic

human billboard A human billboard is someone who applies an advertisement on their person. Most commonly, this means holding or wearing a sign of some sort, but also may include wearing advertising as clothing or in extreme cases, having advertising tattooed on ...

in London's Oxford Street, won the Reed Short Film Competition and Virgin Media Shorts. His 2015 film The Kármán Line, starred

Olivia Colman Sarah Caroline Sinclair ( Colman; born 30 January 1974), known professionally as Olivia Colman, is an English actress. Known for her comedic and dramatic roles in film and television, she has received various accolades, including an Academy A ...

as a wife and mother who contracts an illness causing her to gradually levitate. It won Best Short at the

British Independent Film Awards The British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) is an organisation that celebrates, supports and promotes British independent cinema and filmmaking talent in United Kingdom. Nominations for the annual awards ceremony are announced in early November, ...

and was nominated for the Best British Short Film at the

BAFTAs The British Academy Film Awards, more commonly known as the BAFTA Film Awards is an annual award show hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) to honour the best British and international contributions to film. The cere ...

and was produced by

Campbell Beaton Campbell Beaton is a British producer. About Campbell Beaton is a producer and director. He has made commercials for the likes of Mercedes, Burberry and Dolce & Gabbana for Mario Testino, and promos for artists ranging from Bjork, Profes ...

. The film was subsequently released by

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

and

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

. Sharp then signed with

Tobey Maguire Tobias Vincent Maguire (born June 27, 1975) is an American actor and film producer. He is best known for playing Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series), the title character from Sam Raimi's Spider-Man in film#Sam Raimi films, ''Spider-Man'' tril ...

's company Material Pictures to develop his first feature film and was named a Star of Tomorrow by

Screen International ''Screen International'' is a British film magazine covering the international film business. It is published by Media Business Insight, a British B2B media company. The magazine is primarily aimed at those involved in the global film business. ...

. In 2016 Sharp teamed with creative technologist Ross Goodwin and actor

Thomas Middleditch Thomas Steven Middleditch (born March 10, 1982) is a Canadian actor, comedian and screenwriter. He is known for his role as Richard Hendricks in the HBO series ''Silicon Valley'' (2014–2019), earning a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award ...

(

Silicon Valley (TV series) ''Silicon Valley'' is an American comedy television series created by Mike Judge, John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky. It premiered on HBO on April 6, 2014, and concluded on December 8, 2019, running for six seasons for a total of 53 episodes. ...

) to create Sunspring. It was the first film to be entirely scripted by

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

, and produced widespread international discussion. Sharp and Goodwin followed Sunspring in 2017 with It's No Game starring

David Hasselhoff David Michael Hasselhoff (born July 17, 1952), nicknamed "The Hoff", is an American actor, singer, and television personality. He has set a Guinness World Record as the most watched man on TV. Hasselhoff first gained recognition on ''The You ...

, in which the actor performs dialogue generated by an AI from a large collection of his past performances. It also starred

Sarah Hay Sarah Hay (born September 16, 1987) is an American actress and ballerina. She is best known for her role as Claire Robbins in the Starz mini-series ''Flesh and Bone'', she was nominated for a Golden Globe, a Satellite Award and a Critics' Choi ...

and

Tom Payne (actor) Thomas Payne (born 21 December 1982) is an English actor. He is known for appearing on AMC's '' The Walking Dead'' as Paul "Jesus" Rovia, and BBC's ''Waterloo Road'' as Brett Aspinall. He portrayed Malcolm Bright on the American television s ...

. In 2016,

20th Century Fox 20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm of Walt Dis ...

signed Sharp to co-write and direct the feature film ''Woolly: The True Story of the De-Extinction of One of History’s Most Iconic Creatures'', based on the upcoming book by

Ben Mezrich Ben Mezrich ( ; born February 7, 1969) is an American author. Early life and education Mezrich was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Molli Newman, a lawyer, and Reuben Mezrich, a chairman of radiology at the University of Maryland Schoo ...

(author of

The Accidental Billionaires ''The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal'' is a 2009 book by Ben Mezrich about the founding of Facebook, adapted by Aaron Sorkin for the 2010 film ''The Social Network''. Co-founder Eduar ...

, basis of

The Social Network ''The Social Network'' is a 2010 American biographical drama film directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin, based on the 2009 book ''The Accidental Billionaires'' by Ben Mezrich. It portrays the founding of social networking web ...

). The book is an account of the

de-extinction De-extinction (also known as resurrection biology, or species revivalism) is the process of generating an organism that either resembles or ''is'' an extinct species. There are several ways to carry out the process of de-extinction. Cloning is th ...

work of Harvard Geneticist

George M. Church George McDonald Church (born August 28, 1954) is an American geneticist, molecular engineer, chemist, and a serial entrepreneur who is widely regarded as the "Founding Father of Genomics", and a pioneer in personal genomics and synthetic bio ...

, among others. In 2021

HBO Max HBO Max is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in the United States on May 27, 2020, the service is built around the libraries of HBO, Warner Bros., Cartoon Netw ...

announced it was developing The Human Conditions, a "Fantastical Medical Drama" about "a young British doctor that must treat impossible illnesses and the emotional issues that underlie them" created by Sharp and Executive Produced by

Damon Lindelof Damon Laurence Lindelof (born April 24, 1973) is an American screenwriter, comic book writer, and producer. Among his accolades, he received three Primetime Emmy Awards, from twelve nominations. In 2010, ''Time'' magazine named him one of the ...

Matt Reeves Matt Reeves (born April 27, 1966) is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He first gained recognition for the WB drama series ''Felicity (TV series), Felicity'' (1998–2002), which he co-created with J. J. Abrams. Reeves came t ...

Background & Education

Sharp grew up in a rural British village, and with no connections to the film industry. He attended NYU Graduate Film on a

Fulbright The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

scholarship. His professors were

Todd Solondz Todd Solondz (; born October 15, 1959) is an American filmmaker and playwright known for his style of dark, socially conscious satire. Solondz's work has received critical acclaim for its commentary on the "dark underbelly of middle class America ...

Spike Lee Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee (born March 20, 1957) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. His production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, has produced more than 35 films since 1983. He made his directorial debut ...

and

Darren Aronofsky Darren Aronofsky (born February 12, 1969) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. His films are noted for their surrealistic, melodramatic, and sometimes disturbing elements, often in the form of psychological fiction. Aronof ...

References

External links

Official Website
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sharp, Oscar Year of birth missing (living people) Living people