David Christopher Self (born January 8, 1970) is an American screenwriter best known as the author of the screenplays for the films The Haunting, Road to Perdition and The Wolfman.
[1] He moved to Los Angeles, California, after graduation; he had no contacts and got an entry-level job at Walt Disney Pictures in 1994.
[4] His second script, a 1996 or 1997 adaptation of Joseph R. Garber's 1995 novel of corporate espionage and assassination, Vertical Run, was commissioned by Warner Brothers, but it, too, went into development hell and was never produced.
[5] The semi-fictional script (which showed O'Donnell counseling Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis) was commissioned by producer Armyan Bernstein, who had read Dawn's Early Light.
[5] Another script, Coup D'Etat (about a military overthrow of the government of the United States), also sold in 1998,[7] but both films went into development hell and never emerged.
[2] Made into a feature film in 1999, the script was heavily revised by screenwriter and novelist Michael Tolkin (including a new ending), although Self received sole writing credit.
Self was hired in July 2000 to adapt the DC Comics graphic novel by writer Max Allan Collins and illustrator Richard Piers Rayner.
Self's script received positive attention, and Universal Studios hired him to do a rewrite of Tony Gilroy's screenplay for The Bourne Identity.
Self's second script had a long sequence in which the werewolf terrorizes London, and his climax for the film was originally much longer.
[18][19] However, after much delay (primarily due to MGM's financial difficulties and November 2010 bankruptcy), RoboCop went into turnaround.
[20] In 2011, Paramount Pictures hired Self to script a feature film based on author John Scalzi's Old Man's War series of novels.
The story follow the adventures of an elderly man who receives a genetically enhanced body that allows him to avenge the death of his wife by joining the military.