SAJV Catacombs - Gavin Scott Bio

Gavin Scott, creator of “The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne”, and writer of “Small Soldiers” and “The Borrowers”, spent ten years making films for British television before becoming a screenwriter, working for two years with George Lucas to develop and script “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles”.

With Monty Python’s Terry Jones he wrote the miracle-worker comedy “Absolutely Anything” and the animated series “Blazing Dragons”, a Disney prime-time broadcast for more than two years.

For Castle Rock he created the historical epic “Brooke”, the saga of a young 19^th century Englishman who set up a dynasty of white rajahs in Sarawak, and “First American”, the story of revolutionary war hero Daniel Boone.

Recent screenplays include the Viking saga “Helmstar” for Disney, the comedy “God is My Broker” for (Canal Plus) for director Peter Chelsom, and the mini-series “Spartacus” for Global Media Television and UFA.

Gavin is returning to Jules Verne currently with his work on an Imax version of "Journey to the Center of the Earth" for Walden Entertainment. He is also working on a mini-series based on Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea books for the Scifi Channel. And he is currently finishing his screenplay for Warner Brothers for an action adventure set in World War Two for Warner Brothers, to star Kevin Spacey.

His mini series based on Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Arthurian saga “The Mists of Avalon” was broadcast to TNT’s largest audience ever in summer 2001, starring Juliana Margulies, Angelica Huston and Joan Allen. Gavin was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for the teleplay. There is an excellent interview with Gavin about this project here.

Gavin was born in Hull, Yorkshire, and lived there until his family emigrated to New Zealand. At 17 he spent a year as a volunteer teacher in the jungles of Borneo, working with the children of head-hunters, after which he studied history and political science at Victoria University of Wellington and journalism at the Wellington Polytechnic.

He returned to Britain overland across Asia in 1973, traveling through Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Afghanistan and Iran, and worked for Shelter, the British housing charity, before joining the Times Educational Supplement, from which base he also wrote features for the London Times.

After five years as a reporter and program anchor for BBC Radio Gavin began in 1980 making films for BBC Television’s Newsnight, covering literary as well as political subjects: among his interviewees, J.B. Priestley, Christopher Isherwood, Iris Murdoch and John Fowles.

He then made documentaries on science and culture for series such as Horizon and Man Alive before joining Channel Four News, for which he made films until 1990.

It was during this time that he started writing novels, including “Hot Pursuit” (about a Russian satellite that crashed in New Zealand) and “A Flight of Lies” (about the hunt for the bones of Peking Man). These were published by Collins, Andre Deutsch, St Martin’s Press and Penguin Books. His novel of “Small Soldiers” was a bestseller for Grosset and Dunlap in 1998.

He wrote a manual for political activists called “How to Stop the Bomb” was published in several languages round the world, and was twice a candidate for Britain’s parliament representing the Liberal Party. Within a short time of becoming a screenwriter he found that most of his work was coming from Hollywood, and moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1993; he lives in Santa Monica.