Ben Ripley is an American screenwriter best known for writing the science-fiction

Science fiction film

Science fiction film is a film genre that uses science fiction: speculative, science-based depictions of phenomena that are not necessarily accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial life forms, alien worlds, extrasensory perception, and time travel, often along with futuristic...

 thriller Source Code

Source code

In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...

 directed by Duncan Jones

Duncan Jones

Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones , also known as Zowie Bowie is an English film director, best known for directing the science fiction films Moon and Source Code .-Childhood and family life:...

. Ripley is a graduate of Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 and the University of Southern California

University of Southern California

The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...

's USC School of Cinema-Television.

History

Ben Ripley sold his spec script

Spec script

A spec script, also known as a speculative screenplay, is a non-commissioned unsolicited screenplay. It is usually written by a screenwriter who hopes to have the script optioned and eventually purchased by a producer, production company, or studio....

 for Source Code in 2007 to Universal Studios

Universal Studios

Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....

. It was ranked as one of the top unproduced screenplays in the annual Hollywood black list. In an interview with the Writers Guild of America

Writers Guild of America

The Writers Guild of America is a generic term referring to the joint efforts of two different US labor unions:* The Writers Guild of America, East , representing TV and film writers East of the Mississippi....

, Ripley talked about his script and uncertainty over its production:

Yeah, it was agony. And I wrote it on spec. I wasn’t certain it would ever see the light of day. One thing that kept me going though was that I had a suspicion that if I got this right, it could really open a new level for my writing career. At that point, I’d spent about four years doing studio rewrites on horror movies that were never getting made. I knew that if I showed up with another spec script, I’d have to show up with something very different that took chances. That motivated me to keep going until it seemed right.

Screenplays

• Species III
  Species III
  Species III is a 2004 science fiction film. Directed by Brad Turner, it is the third installment of the Species series and stars Robert Knepper, Sunny Mabrey, Robin Dunne, Amelia Cooke, and John Paul Pitoc...
  
   (2004)
• Species: The Awakening (2007)
• The Watch
  The Watch (film)
  The Watch is a 2008 made for TV movie starring Clea DuVall, James A. Woods, and Elizabeth Whitmere.-Plot:The movie opens with 7 year old Cassie in her bed sleeping. She wakes up hearing a scary noise and sees something at her closet and goes to investigate. When she sees nothing she closes the door...
  
   (2008)
• Source Code
  Source code
  In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
  
   (2011)

External links

• Ben Ripley Interview
• Ben Ripley At Box Office Mojo
  Box Office Mojo
  Box Office Mojo is a website that tracks box office revenue in a systematic, algorithmic way. Brandon Gray started the site in 1999. In 2002, Gray partnered with Sean Saulsbury and they grew the site to nearly two million readers when, in July 2008, the company was purchased by Amazon.com through...