MARK A. ALTMAN is a television and motion picture writer/producer/director who most recently served as co–executive producer of TNT’s hit series The Librarians. Previous TV credits include Agent X, Castle, Necessary Roughness, and as executive producer and cocreator of Femme Fatales for HBO, for which he also directed several episodes.
Altman has also produced the $30 million film adaptation of the bestselling video game DOA: Dead or Alive, which was released by The Weinstein Company’s Dimension Films. His first film was the award-winning Free Enterprise, starring William Shatner and Eric McCormack, which he wrote and produced and for which he won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best New Writer at the AFI Los Angeles Film Festival prior to its theatrical release. He is also a producer of the House of the Dead series, based on the video game from Sega, released by Lionsgate. In addition, he produced James Gunn’s cult classic, The Specials, starring Thomas Haden Church, Rob Lowe, and Judy Greer.
His bestselling two-volume book written with Edward Gross, The Fifty-Year Mission, was released by St. Martin’s Press in summer 2016 in hardcover to nearly unanimous critical acclaim, including raves in The Wall Street Journal, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly.
Altman is a former entertainment journalist. He is the founding publisher of Geek, a hip lifestyle magazine devoted to movies, television, technology, and pop culture. In the past, Altman has contributed to such newspapers and magazines as The Boston Globe, Written By, L’Cinefage, Film Threat, The Manchester Guardian, The Boston Edge, Cult TV, Computer Player, and many others, including Cinefantastique, for which he launched their independent film division, CFQ Films, which produced numerous successful genre features for DVD and VOD release, including The Thirst, starring Buffyverse alums Clare Kramer, Adam Baldwin, and Tom Lenk.
Altman has spoken at numerous industry events and conventions, including ShowBiz Expo as well as the Variety/Final Draft Screenwriters Panel at the Cannes Film Festival. He was a juror at the prestigious Sitges Film Festival in Barcelona, Spain. He has been a frequent guest and panelist at Comic-Con held annually in San Diego, California, and a two-time juror for the Comic-Con Film Festival. In addition to being a graduate of the Writers Guild of America Showrunner Training Program, he is also a member of the Television Academy. You can sign up for email updates here.
EDWARD GROSS is a veteran entertainment journalist who has served on the editorial staff of a wide variety of publications, among them Starlog, Geek, Cinescape, Life Story, RetroVision, Cinefantastique, Femme Fatales, Movie Magic, SFX, and Sci Fi Now. He is the author of a number of nonfiction books, including The Unofficial Story of the Making of a Wiseguy, X-Files Confidential, The 25th Anniversary “Odd Couple” Companion, Alien Nation: The Unofficial Companion, All in This Together: The Unofficial Story of High School Musical, Spider-Man Confidential, Planet of the Apes Revisited (with Joe Russo and Larry Landsman), Rocky: The Ultimate Guide, The Making of the Potterverse, Above & Below: The Unofficial 25th Anniversary “Beauty and the Beast” Companion, Superhero Confidential, and, with Mark A. Altman, the two-volume The Fifty-Year Mission. Currently he serves as executive editor Film/TV for the Bauer Xcel Media digital network, which includes Empire US, Life & Style, Twist, J-14, M, Closer, In Touch, and FHM. You can sign up for email updates here.