Terry Matalas (born December 11, 1975) is an American television writer, director, and executive producer, best known for co-creating and showrunning 12 Monkeys (2015–18), which ran for four seasons on SyFy.

Their script received positive responses and ended up at the offices of Atlas Entertainment, the production company that produced the 1995 film 12 Monkeys.

The company told Matalas and Fickett that they had been planning to reboot the film as a show, and they wanted the pair to rewrite Splinter as a pilot for 12 Monkeys.

Rather than completely rewriting their script, Matalas suggested simply changing the characters' names to those from 12 Monkeys.

[16] The show has been praised for its consistent logic regarding time travel, to which Matalas said that his rule in the writers' room was, "If you have to draw a timeline on a dry erase board then we can't use it.

"[5] Both the cast and the crew, including Matalas, embraced the show's fandom by interacting via social media to answer questions and give shoutouts to individuals.

In the second season, the Emerson Hotel is named after his alma mater, and has a clock that is always set to 10:04 in reference to Back to the Future.