Jeff Vintar

Jeff Vintar attended the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, where he published a series of cartoons in Random House's The Quarterly. Carving out a living as a factory worker, English teacher and transit bus driver, Vintar broke into the film business when he sold three original spec scripts in the span of six months.

The first screenplay, The Long Hello and Short Good-bye, was made into a German-language film by Warner Bros. in 1999, starring Nicolette Krebitz and Katja Riemann. The complex structure of the story worried Studio Hamburg, who re-edited the modern noir just prior to its premiere into a more simple linear film, a move which polarized critics. The film received a positive review in Variety that predicted it would play in broad-minded festivals around the world "where genre fans should lap it up." An English-language version of Vintar's original Long Hello script struggled to reach the screen for years under Face/Off director-producer John Woo and Moebius director Gustavo Mosquera R., with even a young Guillermo del Toro wanting to direct. The actors and producers of the German film still hope for a Rainer Kaufmann director's cut to restore the original picture.

The second screenplay, a twist-filled sci-fi love story called Spaceless, has been in active development for twenty-five years, first at specialty division Fox 2000, then Fox Animation, eventually moving to the main live-action division of Twentieth Century Fox. This infamous development hell has made Spaceless well-known within the industry, with notable professionals calling it their favorite unproduced screenplay, and online collectors always on the lookout for a copy of the script. It is a long-time favorite of Gore Verbinski, who directed The Ring, Pirates of the Caribbean and Rango. Vintar reacquired the rights to Spaceless through the little-known WGA contract reacquisition clause, and the project moved to Universal with Verbinski producing through his Blind Wink Productions. True Detective director Cary Fukunaga was hired to helm, saying he'd never read an original script that "operated on so many levels," but after turning in a troubled rewrite that the studio agreed differed too greatly from the original, he left the production. Verbinski took over again as director with Vintar back on board as writer, and Jerry Bruckheimer producing for Paramount Pictures. Studio head Wyck Godfrey called it "the greatest screenplay never made" and the film was finally in pre-production -- when the COVID pandemic struck -- leading to the sudden end of that Paramount regime and stalling the movie again.

The third spec sale, Hardwired, survived development hell at Walt Disney Pictures under director Bryan Singer only to be picked up by Twentieth Century Fox for Alex Proyas. The resulting film, renamed by the studio I, Robot after the Isaac Asimov short story collection, starred Will Smith and made $350 million worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing non-sequel of the summer, and the tenth highest-grossing film of 2004. The original Hardwired screenplay was a cerebral murder mystery that read like a stage play, and representatives of the Asimov estate considered it "more Asimov than Asimov." Vintar transformed the script into a big-budget studio film, also moving the story into the greater I, Robot universe. When Will Smith signed on to star, studio-mandated changes made the project more of a summer action blockbuster, a move that angered Asimov purists, although many critics considered the final product to have brains as well as brawn. The years have been kind to I, Robot which remains a popular audience favorite, and has inspired a generation of A.I. researchers, with retrospective articles calling for the film's reevaluation, saying it is more relevant than ever, far more faithful to Asimov's entire body of work than generally recognized, and hoping for a sequel.

Other notable Vintar screenplays include an early 20th Century Fox draft of Iron Man, co-written with Stan Lee, which has been called "perhaps the best superhero screenplay of the era"; a remake of Orson Welles' classic The Lady from Shanghai for Columbia Pictures, much-loved by actor Brendan Fraser, who campaigned hard for the film; and the three-week rewrite of Final Fantasy the Spirits Within that landed the production its high-profile voice cast including Alec Baldwin, Ving Rhames, Steve Buscemi, Donald Sutherland and James Woods. Recently Vintar scripted a feature film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's celebrated mind-bending novel, Ubik, which remains a passion project for him and all involved.

Vintar's first produced television series, The Hot Zone starring Julianna Margulies, Liam Cunningham, Noah Emmerich, Topher Grace and Robert Sean Leonard became NatGeo's most-watched scripted series, was certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and warned of a coming catastrophe six months before the worldwide pandemic hit. Its 2021 follow-up, The Hot Zone: Anthrax, starred Daniel Dae Kim and Tony Goldwyn.

Vintar's current projects include an original Christmas comedy, a 70's daredevil biopic, a horror film about insane institutionalized robots, a time travel adventure series, and a crazy monster detective show with a great deal of cannabis. In his spare hours, just for fun, Vintar creates comic strips using his vintage action figure collection, which can be found on Facebook at his Super Mega Fun Time Vintage Action Figures Rock You Page.