James Moran (writer)

James Moran (born 5 March 1972) is a British screenwriter for television and film, who wrote the horror-comedy Severance. He works in the horror, comedy, science-fiction, historical fiction and spy thriller genres.

Born in York, Moran's first produced work came as the result of a competition run by the Sci Fi Channel. The competition asked for writers to submit short science-fiction themed film scripts. Moran won, and his entry Cheap Rate Gravity was produced and shown both on the sci-fi channel and in front of full-length movies, including Final Destination 2.

Moran secured an agent at the PFD Literary Agency from the strength of the competition win, a spec film script, and a six-part TV drama entitled The School. He wrote the entire run of The School on spec, later saying he was unaware that generally only a pilot is written until a production company shows interest. Moran claims the series is still his favourite of his own works.

Moran scripted the 2005 film Severance, which concerns office workers on a team building trip being stalked by a masked killer. Talking about where the idea for Severance came from, Moran said "I'd been trying to think of a good horror idea, and one day had a really bad commute home – yuppies in pinstripe suits were everywhere, pushing past me, jumping the queue, and generally being the ignorant scumbags that they are. So, in a flash of temper, I decided to kill off some yuppies in a horror – take them to a cabin, and pick them off one by one. Once I'd calmed down, I thought that was a pretty good idea – take some standard, British office types, and throw them into a cabin-in-the-woods horror, see how they react. And it developed from there."

On 28 April 2009, the BBC reported that the murder of a 17-year-old student from Norfolk was a re-enactment of a scene written by Moran from the film Severance.

Moran had two features released in 2012: a horror-comedy called Cockneys vs. Zombies, which was shot in March and April 2011 and promised to be "every bit as ridiculous as its title suggests", and a thriller called Tower Block, which was shot in July and August 2011.Tower Block was the closing film at 2012's FrightFest film festival.

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