In the latest episode of the State of the Arts Podcast, host, filmmaker and writer Des Doyle chats with Steven S.DeKnight, acclaimed screenwriter, director, producer, and creator/showrunner behind some of the most influential genre series of the past two decades.
Produced in partnership with Film Ireland and supported by Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland through the Screen Stakeholders Funding Scheme, the State of the Arts series explores the creative processes, industry challenges, and new opportunities that both Irish and international creatives face in today’s ever-evolving artistic landscapes.
In this conversation, DeKnight reflects on his journey breaking into the entertainment industry as a writer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He discusses his work writing, directing, and producing on iconic series such as Angel, Smallville, and Dollhouse, before creating the hit show Spartacus for Starz and showrunning season one of Marvel’s Daredevil. He also talks about making his feature directorial debut with Pacific Rim: Uprising and his return to the Spartacus universe with the upcoming Spartacus: House of Ashur.
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Steven attended the University of California at Santa Cruz where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Theatre Arts and went on to earn an M.F.A. in playwriting from UCLA. He got his start in the entertainment industry as a staff writer on the groundbreaking television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He then wrote, directed, and produced on the series Angel, Smallville, and Dollhousebefore creating and running the hit series Spartacus for the premium cable channel Starz. From there he went on to executive produce and showrun season one of the acclaimed Marvel/Netflix series Daredevil. He made his feature directorial debut with Pacific Rim: Uprising, the sequel to Guillermo del Toro’s international hit. He is currently the creator/executive producer of Spartacus: House of Ashur, a Spartacus spinoff series for Lionsgate/Starz.
A lover of comic books since before he could read, DeKnight has penned issues of Wolverine, Black Widow, and Conan the Barbarian for Marvel. He has also recently published his first two original graphic novels: Hard Bargain, a 1940’s supernatural detective noir for the acclaimed French comic book company Humanoids and, Beneath, a tense, socially relevant horror story for Comixology/Amazon.
Des is a D.I.T. graduate who spent fifteen years working in the Camera Department in the Irish film industry before moving into directing. He is the writer/director of the critically acclaimed feature documentary Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show, featuring JJ Abrams (Alias, Lost, Fringe), Robert and Michelle King (The Good Wife), Ronald D. Moore (Outlander, Battlestar Galactica) and Bill Prady (he Big Bang Theory) amongst others. He has created a number of courses in conjunction with Screen Ireland over the last few years, which provide breakdowns of all the major US and international streaming networks and what their evolving programming needs may be. He also initiated the Pitching Programme for TV Drama and Comedy with Screen Ireland, giving a selected group of writers the opportunity to pitch directly to some of the major Irish production companies based on briefs they provide, and created the LA Writers Room Placements scheme, which allowed Irish writers to travel to LA and spend time in real-world US TV series writers’ rooms.He has also lectured on Showrunning, US TV Production and the Future of Content at USC Los Angeles, Rowan University Philadelphia, Scriptmakers Berlin, APIT TV Producers Conference Lisbon, Northern Ireland Screen, IADT Dublin, Writers Guild of Ireland and as part of the recent Greenlight Screenwriting Labs in Galway.
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