Bryce Zabel | Smackdown Founder Guy
Even though it hasn't been his primary business, CNN correspondent-turned-screenwriter Bryce Zabel has been reviewing movies since the earliest days of his career in TV and film.
As an on-screen critic, Bryce pioneered an extended review format that ran for two years at KCET,
the Los Angeles PBS affiliate. He first reviewed films professionally as an on-air critic at Oregon's KVAL-TV and KEZI-TV. Willing to bite the hand that's fed him as a produced screenwriter and television producer, Bryce began developing Movie Smackdown!
in the late 90s, bringing it to its current state in 2005.
With hundreds of hours of produced film and television credits, Bryce most recently scripted a trio of new mini-series which aired in the U.S. market and were distributed world-wide.
They include the medical
thriller “Pandemic” (2007, Hallmark), the pirate adventure "Blackbeard" (2006, Hallmark), and the disaster epic "The Poseidon Adventure" (2005, NBC).
In 2008, "Pandemic" (co-written with Jackie Zabel) won the Writers Guild of America award in the best "Long Form Original" category.
The latest screenplay written by Bryce & Jackie, "Miles From Nowhere," will air on the Hallmark Channel in 2009. It's the story of a high school athlete who decides to try for a sub-four minute mile to deal with the death of a friend and stars Treat Williams as the athlete's father.
Bryce is currently a consulting producer and the chief writer on "Animal Armageddon," an eight-part documentary miniseries for Animal Planet about mass extinctions. Produced by Burbank's Digital Ranch, it's the biggest project the cable network has ever attempted and will also air in 2009.
Bryce is also raising funds to produce the period comedy, "Let's Do It," about the first full-length student film ever made, "Ed's Co-Ed" -- based on the true story of two students who talked Cecil B. DeMille into loaning them a film camera. DeMille sent his personal cinematographer to Eugene, Oregon where he supervised their production and was the only non-student involved.
Several television series that Bryce created and executive produced are now coming to the DVD market as well. “The Crow: Stairway to Heaven,” which he developed for television from the comic book and feature franchise, was introduced at the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con and is now in distribution. His Fox Television cult-hit, "M.A.N.T.I.S.” will be released on DVD on September 16, 2008.
He's also working with SONY to prep his other science-fiction hit, NBC's "Dark Skies" for DVD release in 2009. Following their original runs in network and syndication, all three series had significant exposure as Sci-Fi Channel staples.
In addition to those sci-fi series, Bryce has also received the Writers Guild on-screen "created by" or "developed by" credit on two other TV drama series including: "E.N.G.” and "Kay O'Brien.” His other series work includes "L.A. Law,” "Life Goes On" and "Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.” As an executive producer, he was responsible for yearly production budgets of over $40-million.
In the world of features and long-form, he has received writing credit on two produced films, "Mortal Kombat: Annihilation," which opened as the #1 box office film in the week of its release, and the hit Disney animated film, "Atlantis: The Lost Empire" ($186-million worldwide). His spec script "Official Denial" -- which explained UFOs as humans from the future -- became the first original movie produced by the Sci-Fi Channel. He also launched the “Unsolved Mysteries” movie franchise with an NBC MOW, “Victim of Love.” Most recently, he wrote “Fall From Grace” for the USA Network based on a story he optioned a full nine months before the journalist who broke it won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.
From 2001 to 2003, Bryce served as Chairman/CEO of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences -- the first writer/producer elected to this position since his boyhood idol, Rod Serling. He presided over the most tumultuous and transformational time in Academy history, taking office at a time when 9/11 forced the cancellation of the Primetime Emmys, not once, but twice. He also led the negotiations which resulted in a 250% increase in the Emmy telecast license fee. As he left office, "Television Week" featured him in an article, "Bryce Zabel: Agent of Change." As a volunteer in the Academy position, Bryce continued an active television and film career, writing multiple scripts during his term, including the network pilots "Hearts and Minds" at HBO, “McMurdo” for DreamWorks and “Black River Falls” for CBS.
Bryce began his career as a television news reporter in both Oregon and Arizona. He came to Los Angeles as an on-air correspondent for CNN where he covered presidential campaigns and space shuttle landings, among other stories. He met his wife in the office of the LA mayor during a news conference. As an on-air PBS reporter, he won several awards of his own for investigative journalism. He was one of the original group of producer/directors on ABC's cutting edge reality magazine series, "Eye on LA."
Bryce started his screenwriting career by combining that passion for journalism and television into his first script, “E.N.G.” -- and it changed his life. The spec pilot about “electronic news gathering” (TV news) launched 108 episodes of the hour drama for the CTV network, led to an overall development deal as a writer/producer for Orion TV and created the lingering suspicion that Bryce, who was born in the U.S. coastal city of Newport, Oregon, was somehow a Canadian.
His production company, Stellar Productions, has been incorporated in the state of California since 1984. It has served as a loan-out for Zabel's services to ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, HBO, Showtime, SONY, Warner Brothers, Disney and other companies, and it has also produced shows in its own right, including the NBC series, "Dark Skies."
Twice nominated by the WGA for outstanding screenwriting, Bryce''s work has also been nominated by the Mystery Writers of America, Environmental Media Association, and LA Area Emmy Awards. His nominated work includes the fan-favorite "L.A. Law" where Jimmy Smits’ character defends baby-killers who get away with murder; and the “Dark Skies” pilot about the Kennedy assassination which launched the NBC “Thrillogy” Saturday night programming concept.
In 2000, Bryce was elected to the Board of Directors of the Writers Guild of America, west, and served one term. On the eve of the 2001 contract expiration, he served as spokesperson for the WGA before national and local media.
Bryce is an accomplished public speaker, appearing on each of the three Emmy shows (introducing Tom Hanks and Walter Cronkite, respectively) in which he served as the TV Academy leader. He has also been a guest on The Today Show, Good Morning America, Politically Incorrect, Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood, etc. and been quoted in Time, USA Today, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Huffington Post and The Washington Post. As an essayist, he has written for Daily Variety, Television Week, The Los Angeles Times, the WGA’s Written By and Emmy Magazine.
Inspired by his work on the three Emmy telecasts, his alma mater, the University of Oregon, asked him to produce "Lights, Camera, Oregon!" -- the 2005 campaign launch to star the public phase of the $600-million goal for "Transforming Lives." This three-hour "live" comedy/musical stage show hosted by Fred Willard let 1100 invited dinner guests experience the glamour and entertainment of a Hollywood awards show as a UO special event. He was also a paid consultant to the Broadcast Film Critics Association, helping the organization develop a TV version of their established "Critics' Choice Awards."
His reputation as a producer caught the attention of the USC School of Cinematic Arts which, in 2007, made him an adjunct professor and asked him to teach "Produce or Perish!,” a graduate level class dealing with all aspects of a film producer's life.
He also maintains the blog, "For What It's Worth: Dispatches from the Culture War" which comments on news, politics, technology, trends and other issues.
As a tribute to his father, Harvey Zabel, a high school history teacher, Bryce also maintains the "Instant History" site which analyzes classic issues of Newsweek and Time to see how accurate their journalism was when first written.
While holding journalists to the task of telling history as it was, he has also bent it from time to time in the service of a good story. He is writing an alternative history novel of the Kennedy years, a "What If," that has a very surprising answer.
Bryce attended high school in Hillsboro, Oregon and college at the University of Oregon in Eugene where he graduated with a BA degree in Broadcast Journalism.
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