Dan O'Bannon

Dan O'Bannon doesn't get nearly enough credit for reshaping sci-fi horror, and that genuinely bugs me. This guy co-wrote Dark Star with John Carpenter while still a film student at USC, then turned around and gave the world the screenplay for Alien — one of the most perfectly constructed horror scripts ever put on paper, with that slow-burn dread and the stomach-dropping reveal that still hits decades later. And if that weren't enough, he wrote and directed The Return of the Living Dead, which basically invented the "zombies eat brains" trope the entire genre runs on today. Two Hugo Awards and an Inkpot Award to his name, and he still feels undersung. A genuine genre architect who left us in 2009 way too soon.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Dan O'Bannon

Name (Japanese)

ダン・オバノン

Reading

だん・おばのん

Born

September 30, 1946 – December 17, 2009

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Libra / Dog

Origin

St. Louis, Missouri, United States

Occupation

screenwriter / film actor / film director / actor / film editor

High school

McCluer High School

University

University of Southern California

Awards & achievements

• 1985 Inkpot Award
• 1980 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation
• 1987 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation

• Official sitehttp://www.danobannon.com/
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan%20O'Bannon
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%80%E3%83%B3%E3%83%BB%E3%82%AA%E3%83%90%E3%83%8E%E3%83%B3
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q498430

Tags

• Missouri
• screenwriter
• film actor
• film director

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.