Michael Arndt Biography

Michael Arndt is an American screenwriter.

After graduating from New York University, Arndt was a script reader for some time before choosing to write screenplays instead. He is best known for his first produced screenplay Little Miss Sunshine, for which he received multiple awards including the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Arndt is also well known for his second screenplay from the film Toy Story 3, for which he also received multiple awards and nominations including a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. This made Arndt the first screenwriter ever to be nominated for both the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay for his first two screenplays.

Early life

Arndt was born in McLean, Virginia. Arndt's father was a member of the Foreign Service, and as a result he lived in various countries, including Sri Lanka and India; he also lived in Virginia for a time. Arndt graduated from Langley High School in McLean, and also attended The Potomac School. He graduated from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Arndt was a script reader for some time, and was a personal assistant to actor Matthew Broderick until late 1999, when he chose to begin writing screenplays full-time. His identical twin brother, David, is a professor at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania.

Screenwriting career

Arndt wrote the first draft of Little Miss Sunshine in three days between May 23"26, 2000. From that initial draft, he made approximately 100 revisions over the course of a year, requesting input from friends and family. Arndt considered directing the film himself "as a no-budget, DV feature" due to his concern of the story being "just too small and "indie" to get any real attention from Hollywood". After the Endeavor Talent Agency read the script in July 2001, however, producers Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa subsequently gave the script to commercial and music video directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who were immediately attracted to the project. Dayton and Faris were signed on by producer Marc Turtletaub, who purchased the script from Arndt for $250,000, on December 21, 2001.

The project was set up at Focus Features, where it was in various stages of pre-production for approximately three years. During that time, Arndt was fired when he objected to centralizing the story on Richard Hoover (played by Greg Kinnear in the film), only to be re-hired within a month after the new writer hired by Focus left the project. Arndt resumed work on the script, which continued through production and into post-production: "The final scene of the movie [...] was written and shot about eight weeks before [its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2006]", he said. Following its theatrical release on August 18, 2006, Little Miss Sunshine won many prizes and awards. Arndt won multiple Best Original Screenplay awards for Little Miss Sunshine, from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and the Writers Guild of America. He was later invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Arndt began collaborating with Lee Unkrich and other Pixar personnel on the screenplay for Toy Story 3 in 2006, working from a treatment by Andrew Stanton, who co-wrote the two preceding films in the series. He was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for his work for Toy Story 3, and became the first ever screenwriter to be nominated for both Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay for his first two screenplays.

Arndt is also set to write the script for The Hunger Games sequel, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Suzanne Collins.

In November 2012, Arndt was announced as the screenwriter for Star Wars: Episode VII. In October 2013, it was announced that Lawrence Kasdan and director J.J. Abrams were rewriting Arndt's script.

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2006	Little Miss Sunshine	Screenplay	Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Writer Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Award for Best Screenplay Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Screenplay - Original Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for New Generation Award Palm Springs International Film Festival for Chairman's Vanguard Award Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen Southeastern Film Critics Association Award for Best Screenplay - Original Washington DC Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Screenplay - Original Nominated"Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Screenplay - Original Nominated"London Critics Circle Film Award for Screenwriter of the Year Nominated"Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Original Screenplay
2010	Toy Story 3	Screenplay	Nominated"Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay Nominated"BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay Nominated"Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Adapted Screenplay Nominated"Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation - Long Form Nominated"Annie Award for Best Writing in an Animated Feature Production Nominated"Bradbury Award Nominated"Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Screenplay - Adapted Nominated"San Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best Screenplay - Original Nominated"Satellite Award for Best Screenplay - Original Nominated"Saturn Award for Best Writing Nominated"Washington DC Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
2012	Brave	Additional screenplay material
2013	Oblivion	Screenplay (as Michael DeBruyn)
	The Hunger Games: Catching Fire	Screenplay (as Michael DeBruyn)
2014	Phineas and Ferb	Screenplay
2015	Star Wars: Episode VII	Story and Screenplay