Chris Terrio

Early life and education

Chris Terrio was raised in a Catholic family in Staten Island. He is of Italian and Irish descent, as well as of Acadian descent. He graduated in 1997 from Harvard University, where he studied English literature and German phenomenology, lived in Adams House, and participated in the Harvard Radcliffe Dramatic Club and the Hasty Pudding Theatricals. Terrio attended University of Cambridge for his MLitt, but eventually decided to enroll in film school. He received his master's degree from the USC School of Cinematic Arts in 2002.

Directing

At age 26, he directed the feature film Heights (Sony Pictures Classics, 2005), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It follows a pivotal twenty-four hours in the interconnected lives of five New Yorkers. It stars Glenn Close, Elizabeth Banks, James Marsden and Jesse Bradford, and features Isabella Rossellini, George Segal and Rufus Wainwright in small roles. It was one of the final films produced by Ismail Merchant. The film won a "Best Independent Feature Film Casting" award from the Casting Society of America, USA in 2005.

In 2010, he directed the episode "I Look Like Frankenstein", which was Episode 8 in Season 3 of Damages on FX.

In 2002, he directed, wrote and produced a short film entitled Book of Kings, which starred Aasif Mandvi among others. It premiered at Robert De Niro's first annual Tribeca Film Festival in 2002, and continued to play on film circuits around the world, picking up several major awards.

Terrio plans to direct films based on his screenplays The Ends of the Earth, Random Family, and A Foreigner in the next two years.

Screenwriting

Terrio wrote the script for Argo, winning the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the screenplay, and the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. His screenplay was also nominated for Best Screenplay awards from the Golden Globes and the BAFTA Awards. For the Argo screenplay, he also won Best Screenplay or Best Adapted Screenplay honors from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, the Online Film Critics Society Awards, the Austin Film Critics Association, the Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards, the San Diego Film Critics Society Awards, the Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards, the 2013 University of Southern California (USC) Scripter Award, and the Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards. He loosely adapted the screenplay based on a Wired article by Joshuah Bearman entitled "The Great Escape" and the autobiography of Tony Mendez, The Master of Disguise, supplementing that material with extensive research of his own.

Terrio recalls the experience of writing a dialogue-intensive scene for Argo:

Scene 58--nine men sitting in a conference room talking through scenarios for cover stories to get Americans out of Iran--was difficult. There's nothing to cut to except the actors' faces. The tension has to come from the subtle shifts of power. CIA and State Department officials debate ideas, each worse than the last. I knew the crucial beat would come when our hero, Tony Mendez, speaks up. He couldn't seem disrespectful, yet he had to make his case. I settled on the idea that Mendez would throw a spitball into the conversation with a joke about giving the bicycle escapees Gatorade. The table would go silent. The attention of the room would shift to the court jester. I also had to determine whether Gatorade was on the market and a commonly recognized brand in December of 1979. I celebrated when I found a magazine from the year before featuring a dehydrated athlete with a Village People moustache: 'Gatorade: When You're Thirsty to Win.'

Terrio also wrote the screenplays for two films he directed: the feature film Heights, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival, and the award-winning short film Book of Kings.

Terrio re-wrote David S. Goyer's script for Warner Bros.' Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016). On July 25, 2014, Variety reported that Terrio was also eyed by Warner Bros. to write the screenplay for Justice League, and on January 30 2017, it was announced that Terrio had done a re-write Ben Affleck's script for an untitled Batman movie, which Affleck co-wrote with DCEU co-runner and producer Geoff Johns.

Terrio has also been hired by Paramount Pictures and Indian Paintbrush to write the script for the drama A Murder Foretold, based on an article in The New Yorker by David Grann revolving around a number of high-profile murders in Guatemala. Terrio hopes to direct his own screenplay.

Terrio has completed the adaptation of Harlan Coben's novel, Tell No One, for Warner Bros., with Ben Affleck also being attached to direct. There has already been a French film directed by Guillaume Canet based on the novel.

In addition, Terrio has written a screenplay for a film adaptation of Richard II, which director James Ivory intends to film in 3D.

On September 12, 2017 it was announced that Terrio would be co-writing the script for Star Wars: Episode IX with director J.J. Abrams. The film will be released on December 20, 2019.

Other work

Terrio has also edited the documentary short First Out.

He has worked on the Ivory–Merchant films (directed by James Ivory) Le Divorce and The Golden Bowl. He was also previously an assistant to Ivory.

Terrio also served as an assistant director on the short film Equation, directed by Anuj Majumdar, and was also a grip on the short film Awake, directed by Lori Lovoy-Goran, who won a DGA Student Film Award and a SXSW Competition Award for her documentary short film In Between Days.