Daniel "Danny" Bilson (born July 25, 1956) is an American writer, director, and producer in movies, television, videogames, and comic books. With his writing partner Paul DeMeo, Danny Bilson wrote the movie The Rocketeer (1991), the videogame Everything or Nothing (2003), the television series The Sentinel (1996) and The Flash (1990), and recent issues of the comic book, The Flash. Bilson also directed and produced The Sentinel and The Flash.
Bilson's scope has been characterized as transmedia. He has adapted comic books into movies (The Rocketeer), comic books into television (The Flash), and movies into videogames (James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing). Bilson's and DeMeo's writing has tended toward action and sci-fi genres, emphasizing more than human heroes and their visceral adventures.
Bilson was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Mona Weichman and the director Bruce Bilson (Bewitched, Get Smart, Hogan's Heroes). Bruce Bilson Biography (1928-)
His daughter, Rachel Bilson born on August 25, 1981 is an actress, notable for her role in The O.C.. He has two other daughters, Hattie Elizabeth Bilson, born December 19, 2001 and Rosemary, born February 10, 2007.
Bilson graduated from California State University, San Bernardino. There he met and teamed up with long-time writing partner Paul DeMeo. Together they formed Pet Fly productions.
Trancers
After college, Bilson struggled to break into the movie business, working as an extra while writing screenplays. Bilson and DeMeo produced their first script, Trancers (1985), a noirish tale about a time-traveling detective from the future. This cult hit spawned five sequels, for which Bilson and DeMeo contributed some writing.
Zone Troopers
Bilson debuted as a director for Zone Troopers (1985), co-written by DeMeo, a tale of American World War II soldiers who find an alien spacecraft. Danny shot Zone Troopers for $600,000 in Italy. Following this, the writing duo performed the same roles on The Wrong Guys (1988) a comedic spoof of boy scouting.
The Rocketeer
Bilson and DeMeo then began their comic book adaptation of The Rocketeer (1991). Writing for Disney, the partners were hired and fired several times during the five years of movie development. The two had a rough executive experience in which scenes were deleted only to be restored years later. The film finally made it to theaters and was heralded by Entertainment Weekly as the best comic book adaptation to film.
The Sims
Bilson was a consulting producer to Electronic Arts for the video game The Sims (2000).
Medal of Honor
Bilson got a "Special Thanks" credit on Medal of Honor: Allied Assault.
Bilson and DeMeo left Electronic Arts to pursue their own transmedia intellectual property (IP). The two having successfully carried an IP from comic to screen and screen to videogame, conceived new characters and stories that would succeed in multiple media.
The Flash and Red Menace
Bilson and DeMeo returned to their childhood roots from which their inspirations and adaptations came: comics. The two co-wrote Fastest Man Alive for DC Comics and along with actor Adam Brody (who was dating Bilson's daughter, Rachel, at the time), they are writing a new miniseries for Wildstorm Comics named Red Menace.
Around this time, Bilson also began teaching, in part from the encouragement of his friend and World of Warcraft guildmate, Bing Gordon. Bilson is an adjunct professor at USC School of Cinematic Arts, where he teaches traditional screenwriting and also character development and storytelling for videogames.
THQ
Bilson has said that he is planning to "greenlight more Wii games: family, casual, get everyone on the couch games. I'm a big believer in that." He continued, " Right now, we're not moving hardcore stuff to the Wii. We were; we stopped it, just because we're a little risk averse".
He recently courted controversy when he referred to the Wii as a “Monopoly box in a closet”. This was despite selling over 700,000 copies of De Blob and 1.2 million copies of Big Beach Sports on the platform.
Bilson claimed that “there is so much junk on the Wii that if you add up all the numbers of those hundreds of SKUs, I'm sure you can cough up some number that's impressive”. According to Metacritic THQ have released only one game on the Wii with an average score higher than 80% (De Blob). Their best selling title on the system has an average score of 44% (Big Beach Sports). Their other titles include All Star Cheer Squad 2, Merv Griffin's Crosswords and Bratz: The Movie.
