The Power List 2012


Moira Buffi ni Screenwriter, playwright


Moira Buffi ni (above) makes moving from playwright to being readily accepted as a screenwriter look easy, but it’s not many who have their fi rst two screenplays – for Tamara Drewe and Jane Eyre – produced within two years of being commissioned. It’s for Jane Eyre in particular that she’s on the Power List. Her take on the classic novel – directed by Cary Fukunaga for BBC Films/Ruby Films and starring Mia Wasikowska and man-of-the-moment Michael Fassbender – was critically acclaimed, consolidating her reputation as a talented screenwriter and winning her praise for innovative structuring of story. The production has boosted her profi le and opened other doors for Buffi ni, such as speaking about a screenwriter’s contribution to a fi lm’s creative vision as part of a Bafta/BFI series of talks. Buffi ni also campaigns to raise awareness of new play-writing in British theatre as a founder member of the ‘Monsterists’, and has written the script for Neil Jordan’s vampire fi lm Byzantium, which will be released in 2012.


Jane Goldman Screenwriter


Jane Goldman doesn’t need her husband (TV presenter Jonathan Ross) to boost her profi le, although the frequent namechecks on his shows undoubtedly help. Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe did much to elevate her screenwriter status when he revealed that it was her “wonderful” script that had drawn him to star in ghost story The Woman In Black. Goldman continues to cement her reputation as a distinctive, female voice in a male-dominated market. She is increasingly ‘the’ person to go to with an ‘otherworldly’ or ‘fantasy’ brief, on the back of her experience with fi lms such as Kick-Ass, Stardust and X-Men: First Class. Not surprising, then, that she is to adapt Paul Murray’s futuristic short story Anubis.


18 | The Power List | March 2012 Jane Goldman Abi Morgan


Abi Morgan Scriptwriter


Abi Morgan has been one of the most prolifi c drama writers of the past 12 months, with critical and commercial hits in both cinema and television. Period newsroom drama The Hour drew more than 2 million viewers for BBC2 last summer and has been commissioned for a second series. Then came a cinematic double-bill of Steve McQueen’s Shame and Margaret Thatcher biopic The Iron Lady. All three projects were nominated for Baftas and Golden Globes. Morgan also adapted Sebastian Faulks’ World War I novel Birdsong for BBC1, which pulled in more than 7 million viewers. She is now working on The Invisible Woman, about Charles Dickens and his long-time mistress Nelly Ternan, which will be directed by Ralph Fiennes, and has turned in a draft script for The Little Mermaid for director Joe Wright.


Heidi Thomas Screenwriter


As the creative force behind the BBC’s biggest drama launch since records began, Heidi Thomas (below) is arguably the writer of the moment. With ratings that a Saturday night talent show would be proud of, expectations are high for the second series of Call The Midwife, and Thomas is in the spotlight to come up with the goods. But she is no fl ash in the pan, having won awards for her writing as far back as 1985, with one of her fi rst plays on leaving university. Period work is Thomas’s mainstay, having written and exec produced both series of the new Upstairs Downstairs, Cranford and an adaptation of the Noel Streatfeild novel Ballet


Shoes – all of which picked up awards. No doubt Call The Midwife will be adding to the trophy cabinet.


Writers


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