The Writers:
Writing team Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio are the highest grossing screenwriters of all time. They’ve written a number of films for Disney including Shrek, Aladdin, and The Pirates of the Caribbean films. These guys are in their early fifties, and it looks like they have decades more of amazing stories in front of them.
Credits:
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (characters) (announced) – 2016
The Lone Ranger (screen story) / (screenplay) – 2013
Lovestruck: The Musical (TV Movie) – 2013
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (characters) / (screenplay) – 2011
Turbo Dates (TV Series) – 2009-2011
National Treasure: Book of Secrets (story) – 2007
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (characters) / (written by) – 2007
Deja Vu (written by) – 2006
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (characters) / (written by) – 2006
The Legend of Zorro (story) – 2005
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (screen story) / (screenplay) – 2003
Shrek (screenplay) – 2001
The Road to El Dorado (screenplay) – 2000
The Mask of Zorro (screenplay) / (story) – 1998
Small Soldiers (written by) – 1998
The Puppet Masters (screenplay) – 1994
Aladdin (screenplay) – 1992
Little Monsters (written by) – 1989
Quotes:
Turn in the first draft on the first day of shooting – that’s the goal. (Elliott)
I’ve come to believe that making a film is like a massive version of throwing a dinner party – you invite a lot of people and hope that it turns out good, but you can’t really control it. And after everyone has left and you’ve got this big mess, you wonder if all the work was worth it, why you went to all the trouble. (Rossio)
The most important commandment is to sustain interest—if you do that, everything else follows; you can move people emotionally, you can make them laugh, you can do all sorts of things. It’s most important to demonstrate character complexity or to let characters do things that create interest, because that’s how we live our lives day to day. (Rossio)