Get to know Don.

Don Michael Paul wrote his way into Hollywood on a legal pad, and he has been working at the top of the business ever since.

The writer

His first script, Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, sold right out of the gate. Mickey Rourke and Don Johnson signed on, MGM released it, and Alan Ladd, Jr., the studio chief who greenlit Star Wars, signed Don to a four-picture deal. Ladd handed him a dream assignment: adapting Davis Grubb’s The Night of the Hunter, the classic novel behind one of the great American films.

Warner Bros. came next. Joel Silver and Lorenzo di Bonaventura hired him to adapt John Gilstrap’s bestselling thriller Nathan’s Run. In 1988 he was one of the very first screenwriters to take on Spider-Man, more than a decade before the character reached the big screen. He has written television pilots for every major network and worked for two of the most powerful producers television ever had, Aaron Spelling and Stephen J. Cannell.

The actor

He knows the other side of the lens, too. Trained in theatre arts at Cal State Fullerton, he played opposite Kurt Russell in Winter People, starred with Ally Sheedy, Virginia Madsen and Phoebe Cates in Heart of Dixie, and headlined Cannell’s CBS series The Hat Squad and Spelling’s Models Inc. on FOX. Actors trust him because he has stood where they stand.

The director

He stepped behind the camera with Half Past Dead for Screen Gems, writing and directing Steven Seagal, Morris Chestnut and Ja Rule, then directed Who’s Your Caddy? for Dimension. Universal and Sony followed and handed him their franchises: three Tremors films, Death Race, two Jarheads, two Snipers, The Scorpion King and Kindergarten Cop 2. More than ten of his movies have premiered on Netflix. Six reached the Top 10, and two, Tremors: Shrieker Island and Sniper: Ghost Shooter, climbed to number three. Not one went over budget.

The world

He has shot on five continents and in roughly fifteen languages: the basilicas of Budapest, the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria, where he made ten features, the high-veld of South Africa, the jungles of Krabi, Istanbul, Santorini, Vancouver and the Brandenburg Gate. For Jarhead: Law of Return he filmed on the Tower of David in the heart of Jerusalem, in the Negev desert and in Eilat. Big pictures, real budgets, any country.

Now

Today he develops and directs through his Austin company, Nuevo Laredo Productions, with The Last King, a World War II drama about King Boris III of Bulgaria, on the slate. He has finished Dead and Cool: Villains, Obsessions, and Starlets, a memoir of his Hollywood life, completes his MFA in writing at Spalding University in January 2027, and teaches the next generation as a professor of practice in filmmaking and screenwriting.