A Knight's Tale

Brian Thomas Helgeland (born January 17, 1961) is an American screenwriter, film producer and director. He is most known for writing the screenplays for L.A. Confidential (for which he received an Academy Award), Mystic River, and A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master.

Helgeland was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the son of Norwegian-born parents Karin and Thomas.His surname is Norwegian, named after a landscape in Northern Norway. A graduate of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, he received his undergraduate degree at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

In 1998, Helgeland won both an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (for L.A. Confidential) and a Razzie (for The Postman) in the same year. Only one person had achieved the dubious feat before (Alan Menken in 1993), and only one other (Sandra Bullock in 2010) has achieved it since. He accepted the Razzie and became only the fourth person in its history to be personally presented with the statuette.

Helgeland wrote and directed the films A Knight’s Tale (2001) and The Order (2003). He has worked with director Clint Eastwood twice, in 2002 on Blood Work, and in 2003 on Mystic River, for which he was Oscar nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, and has also written an as of yet unproduced adaptation of Moby-Dick. In 2004, Helgeland also co-wrote the screenplay for the major motion picture The Bourne Supremacy, for which he was uncredited. In early 2008, Helgeland was attached to shape the script of the thriller Green Zone after screenwriter Tom Stoppard had to drop out, once again collaborating with director Paul Greengrass, whom he worked with on The Bourne Supremacy, as well as reuniting with actor Matt Damon, who played the Bourne trilogy’s main protagonist, Jason Bourne. Helgeland also wrote the remake of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, starring Denzel Washington and John Travolta. The film was released on June 12, 2009. In 2009, director Richard Donner mentioned a second collaboration with writer Helgeland and actor Mel Gibson on an unnamed project, having previously all worked together on the 1997 thriller Conspiracy Theory. —Wikipedia