Frank Darabont Net Worth

Frank Darabont's Quotes

• If you're going to succeed, you've got to be like one of those punch-drunk fighters in the old Warner Bros. boxing pictures: too stupid to fall down, you just keep slugging and stay on your feet. [Oct. 1994, "Premiere" magazine]
• [on Quentin Tarantino from an interview in Creative Screenwriting] I find Quentin's work very interesting, because he does dabble so well in the nihilistic world, but yet, there's a real streak of humanity in his work. It's not about the nihilism, it's about people in a sense operating as honorably as they can in a nihilistic world.
• [on Stephen King from an interview in Creative Screenwriting] We have a joke now - because the first two films I directed were period prison movies - that my directing career will stall unless he writes another period prison story.
• [on his rejected script for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) (aka Indiana Jones 4)] Steven [Steven Spielberg] was very, very happy with the script and said it was the best draft of anything since Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). That's really high praise and gave me a real sense of accomplishment, especially when you love the material you're working on as much as I love the "Indiana Jones" films. And then you have George Lucas read it and say, "Yeah, I don't think so, I don't like it". And then he resets it to zero when Spielberg is ready to shoot it that coming year, [which] is a real kick to the nuts. You can only waste so much time and so many years of your life on experiences like that, you can only get so emotionally invested and have the rug pulled out from under you before you say, "Enough of that".
• If you look at a classic horror movie like The Exorcist (1973), part of what makes it so scary is that it feels so damn real. If you add a layer of too much hysterical, theatrical reality, then audiences take it less seriously. But if you play it for absolute reality, then the dread and the horror - which is why we go to horror movies in the first place - is reinforced.

Interesting Facts about Frank Darabont

1. Wrote a draft of the screenplay for Collateral (2004).
2. After closely working for more than a year with Steven Spielberg on a script for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), the script was personally rejected by producer George Lucas who had taken it upon himself to rewrite the script to his liking. Spielberg loved the script, but deferred to longtime pal Lucas on the matter.
3. The D-Day sequence at Normandy, in Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998), was an addition that Darabont himself proposed during script revisions.
4. The Shawshank Redemption (1994) is ranked #23 on the American Film Institute's 100 Most Inspiring Movies of All Time.
5. His first novella "Walpuski's Typewriter" was published in 2005.
6. Good friends with Stephen King.
7. He was born in 1959 in a refugee camp in France, where his parents were briefly resettled after the Soviet crushing of the 1956 Budapest uprising.
8. Is good friends with movie poster artist Drew Struzan.
9. Has directed 2 actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Morgan Freeman (Best Actor, The Shawshank Redemption (1994)) and Michael Clarke Duncan (Best Supporting Actor, The Green Mile (1999).
10. In Shreveport, Lousiana in the middle of Pre-production on "Stephen King's The Mist" [January 2007]
11. Currently working on adapting "The Mist," a short story by Stephen King, into a film. No studio announcement has been made as of October 2004, but if all goes on schedule, the final product should see theatrical release in the second half of 2006. (Source: Daniel Robert Epstein's interview with Frank Darabont at http://suicidegirls.com/words/Frank+Darabont/ ) [October 2004]
12. Frank Darabont has been one of the top script doctors and rewrites in Hollywood going back to the early 1990s. Among the projects he has performed uncredited writing on include: The Rocketeer (1991), Copycat (1995), The Fan (1996), Eraser (1996), Saving Private Ryan (1998), The Majestic (2001), Minority Report (2002), The Salton Sea (2002), Collateral (2004), Law Abiding Citizen (2009) and most recently Godzilla (2014).
13. Was hired in 2004 to write the script for Mission: Impossible III (2006) after screenwriters Robert Towne and Dean Georgaris failed to deliver good enough drafts. Darabont's script would get polished by Joe Carnahan who was originally attached to direct following David Fincher's departure. Eventually, Cruise hired J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci to write the script for the project.
14. He was short listed as a director for The Huntsman: Winter's War (2016) and eventually agreed to co-write and direct the film before dropping out.
15. Graduated from Hollywood High School in 1977 and did not attend college.
16. Was inspired to pursue a career in film after seeing the George Lucas film THX 1138 (1971) in his youth.
17. His first job after finishing school was working at the famed Hollywood Egyptian Theater at the concession stand and as a seat finder, watching movies for free.
18. He became involved in filmmaking by becoming a production assistant on such films as Hell Night (1981) The Seduction (1982) and Trancers (1984).
19. Sold his first screenplay titled Black Cat Run in 1986, but it was not produced until over a decade later as a television film under the same name. Darabont was approached by Chuck Russell (who was a producer on Hell Night and The Seduction) with an offer to become his writing partner, as he had become interested in Darabont's writing after reading a spec script he had written for the television series M*A*S*H (1972). The two began working on a script for a remake of the film The Blob (1958), which they had planned to shop around to studios, until they were both hired to rewrite the script of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) with Russell directing the film. The two were only given two weeks to rewrite the script and managed to do it in ten days. The success of their A Nightmare on Elm Street film allowed them to produce the first script they had originally written, The Blob (1988) Darabont was now a successful writer for hire and went on to write The Fly II (1989) an early draft of The Rocketeer (1991), and an unproduced sequel to Commando (1988).
20. He has directed one film that has been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: The Shawshank Redemption (1994).