Craig J. Nevius

Craig J. Nevius is an American playwright, screenwriter and film producer. He is the owner of Windmill Entertainment LLC, a television development and production company that specializes in both scripted and unscripted projects with pop culture appeal.

Born in Chicago. Nevius began his professional writing career at 17 while attending William Fremd High School in Palatine, Illinois. While a student there, he wrote a play called Class Dismissed about an idealistic but exasperated English teacher who holds his five toughest students hostage in the classroom to teach them a special lesson about life. The play was published by Samuel French Inc., making Nevius the youngest published playwright in history. Nevius subsequently authored two other plays: The Men's Room and Where the Heart Is; both of which were originally produced by Chicago's Group Theater and directed by Nevius.

After studying playwrighting and directing at Carnegie Mellon University, Nevius moved to Hollywood to pursue film and television. He drew on his college and theater experience for his first screenplay, a romantic comedy called Happy Together which won the Columbia Pictures FOCUS Award and was produced by Apollo Pictures. The film starred Patrick Dempsey as an introverted playwright who is mistakenly assigned to the same dorm room as an extroverted actress played by Helen Slater.Happy Together is notable for featuring Brad Pitt (pre-"Thelma & Louise") in his first film role. Pitt was cast by Nevius when the producer and director could not decide between Pitt and another unknown actor.

After Happy Together, Nevius began working with the noted low-budget producer and director Roger Corman. While working for Corman, Nevius also began a second career as a producer. He wrote and produced in several genres ranging from suspense thriller (Ladykiller (1996) starring Ben Gazzara and Death's Door starring David Carradine) to family comedy (Stepmonster (1993) starring Alan Thicke and "A Very Unlucky Leprechaun" (1998) starring Warwick Davis) to Gothic horror ("The Marquis De Sade" starring Nick Mancuso and "Hellfire" starring Ben Cross). Most were typical low-budget Corman exploitation films.

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