David Koepp

Biography

David Koepp (/kɛp/; born June 9, 1963) is an American filmmaker. Koepp is the ninth most successful screenwriter of all time in terms of U.S. box office receipts with a total gross of over $2.3 billion.

Koepp has achieved both critical and commercial success in a wide variety of genres: thriller, science fiction, comedy, action, drama, crime, superhero, horror, adventure, and fantasy.

Some of the best-known films he has written include the sci-fi adventure films Jurassic Park (1993), The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008); the crime film Carlito's Way (1993); the action spy films Mission: Impossible (1996) and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014); the superhero film Spider-Man (2002); the sci-fi disaster film War of the Worlds (2005) and the mystery thriller Angels & Demons (2009). Koepp has directed seven feature films over the course of his career: The Trigger Effect (1996), Stir of Echoes (1999), Secret Window (2004), Ghost Town (2008), Premium Rush (2012), Mortdecai (2015), and You Should Have Left (2020).

Koepp was born in Pewaukee, Wisconsin as the youngest of four children, to Donald Koepp, who owned a billboard company, and a family therapist mother. While attending Kettle Moraine High School in Wales, Wisconsin, he worked evenings and weekends at the McDonald's restaurant in Delafield.

Originally studying to become an actor, first at the University of Minnesota for a year and afterward at the University of Wisconsin–Madison for two years, he enrolled in the film school of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1984. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in film from UCLA in 1990.

Koepp is married to Melissa Thomas, a writer, with whom he has four children. He was previously married to artist Rosario Varela, with whom he has one child, born in 1994.