He writes and maintains the popular screenwriting blog johnaugust.com, and develops screenwriter-targeted software.
He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, voting in the Writers branch.
August was born and raised in Boulder, Colorado. He earned a degree in journalism from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa and an MFA in film from the The Peter Stark Producing Program at the University of Southern California. He lives in Los Angeles.
August's debut film was 1999's critically acclaimed Go, for which he also served as co-producer and second unit director.
In 1998, August acquired the film rights to Daniel Wallace's Big Fish. His adaptation became the 2003 Tim Burton film of the same name and earned August a 2003 BAFTA Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.
John August is a screenwriter and film director. He married his partner since 2001, Mike Douglass, on June 28, 2008. Together they have a daughter and live in Hancock Park neighborhood in LA. August said his sexual orientation has helped him notice things others miss “For the first 20 years of my life, I was observing the world & trying to model my behavior to look as straight as possible. It's sort of this psychological 'CSI' you're doing on a daily basis. You're always looking for motivation"
Sundance Film Festival '07 - "The Nines" Premiere Party. PARK CITY, UT - JANUARY 21: (L-R) Producer Bruce Cohen, director John August, Michael August and producer Dan Etheridge pose for photos at the premiere of 'The Nines' at the Eccles Theatre during the 2007 Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2007 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Getty Images)
Since 2003, August has written the screenplay for several Tim Burton films, including Corpse Bride, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (an adaptation of Roald Dahl's classic children's book), and Frankenweenie. August also shared story credit with Seth Grahame-Smith on Burton's Dark Shadows.
The Nines, his writing/directing debut starring Ryan Reynolds, Melissa McCarthy, Hope Davis and Elle Fanning, premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and Venice Film Festival's Critics’ Week.
For television, August has developed three projects. D.C, a one-hour drama for the WB Network, ran in April 2000. Alaska, a crime drama for ABC, shot a pilot in 2004 directed by Kim Manners but was not picked up for series. Ops, a one-hour drama co-created by Jordan Mechner, was developed for 20th Television/Fox, but never filmed a pilot.
August is writing the book for the Broadway musical adaptation of Big Fish, with music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa, directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman. Scenic design is by Julian Crouch, costume design by William Ivey Long and lighting design by Donald Holder. Norbert Leo Butz is attached to star as Edward Bloom. The musical is expected to have its out-of-town tryout in Chicago, Illinois in April through May 2013 at the Oriental Theatre. It is scheduled to open at Broadway's Neil Simon Theater in October 2013.
August earned a 2006 Grammy nomination for lyrics for "Wonka's Welcome Song" from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
In 2003, August established johnaugust.com as a repository for the 100+ screenwriting advice columns he had written for IMDb. The site now has over 1,500 posts.
He founded Quote-Unquote Apps in 2010, which develops software related to film and the film industry. Their releases include FDX Reader, an iOS application that displays Final Draft files; Less IMDb, a browser extension for Safari, Chrome, and Firefox that reorganizes the layout of IMDb pages; and Bronson Watermarker, an OS X watermarking application that supports multiple outputs.
In 2012, the Quote-Unquote team, along with Stu Maschwitz, developed Fountain, a simple markup syntax for screenplays. Later that year, Quote-Unquote released the first public beta of Highland, an OS X utility that converts screenplays between PDF, FDX, and Fountain formats, and works as a Fountain text editor.
August, along with fellow screenwriter Craig Mazin, also hosts Scriptnotes, a weekly podcast on the craft of screenwriting and the film industry.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_August
Further Readings:
Actors: Ryan Reynolds, Hope Davis, Melissa McCarthy, Elle Fanning, David Denman
Directors: John August
Writers: John August
Producers: Bruce Cohen, Dan Etheridge, Dan Jinks, Todd King
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
DVD Release Date: January 29, 2008
Amazon: The Nines (Special Edition)
The Nines consists of three short films, each featuring the same actors in different — and sometimes overlapping — roles. Together, three stories form a single narrative that explores the relationships between author and character, actor and role, creator and creation. Alternately funny and unsettling, The Nines is like a riddle where the answer is the question: "How does it all add up?" "The Prisoner" tells the story of a troubled television star (Reynolds) who finds himself under house arrest, with his chipper publicist (McCarthy) and his disillusioned next-door neighbor (Davis) providing his only links to the outside world. Mysterious events lead him to question whether one or more of the women are deceiving him about the nature of his incarceration. "Reality Television" is a half-hour episode of "Behind the Screen," a Project Greenlight-style documentary series tracking the process of creating a network television drama. "Knowing" finds an acclaimed videogame designer (Reynolds) and his wife (McCarthy) facing car trouble deep in the woods. Their daughter (Elle Fanning) uncovers information which leads to a difficult and irrevocable choice.
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