Don Macpherson

Don Macpherson (born 7 September 1954) is a British screenwriter working in films and television.

Macpherson was born in Durham, and educated at Nottingham High School and Queen's College, Cambridge, where he was awarded an Exhibition to read English.

After working at The Other Cinema, he became a journalist for Screen International then joined Time Out as a film critic. He was part of a group that set up City Limits magazine, then wrote features for The Face and The Sunday Times. During this period, he worked for BBC TV's Arena on It's All True for producer Alan Yentob and director Julien Temple.

His first solo credit was a BBC TV classic serial The Dark Angel (1989) with Peter O'Toole, Jane Lapotaire and Beatie Edney, an adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's gothic novel Uncle Silas, shown on PBS's Masterpiece Theatre. For producer Stephen Woolley an adaptation of William McIlvanney's novel The Big Man (1990) followed, starring Liam Neeson, Billy Connolly and Joanne Whalley. His original script Jonathan Wild became a project for Neil Jordan, and was bought by Jodie Foster for her company Egg Productions. This cult script led to work at Warner Bros., on projects such as Tale of Two Cities for Terry Gilliam and Frankenstein for Tim Burton, following rewrite work on David Fincher's Alien 3 (1992) with Sigourney Weaver. His adaptation of a Cornell Woolrich story The Black Bargain (1995) starring Miguel Ferrer and Peter Berg was directed by Keith Gordon for the US pay TV channel Showtime.