Billy Ray (screenwriter)

Billy Ray (born 1962)^[1] is an American screenwriter and film director. He began writing for television and movies in 1994 with Color of Night.^[2] He has written numerous films including the first Hunger Games film (2012), Richard Jewell (2019), and Captain Phillips (2013) earning an Oscar nomination for the latter.

Billy Ray
Ray in 2007
Born	1962 (age 62–63) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation(s)	Film director, screenwriter
Spouse	Stacy Sherman

Biography

Ray was born in Los Angeles, and raised in Encino, Los Angeles, California. He is from a Jewish family, and attended Steven Wise Temple and Birmingham High School.^[3][1][4] Starting in 2003, he began to direct as well as write; his first film was Shattered Glass, inspired by the true story of Stephen Glass, a journalist who fabricated a majority of his stories.^[5] He was nominated for Most Promising Filmmaker by the Chicago Film Critics Association and an Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay for his work on this film.^[6] Breach (2007), which Ray co-wrote and directed, tells a similar story about Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent convicted of spying for the Soviet Union and later, Russia, for more than two decades, and Eric O'Neill, who worked as his assistant and helped bring about his downfall.^[7]

He is perhaps best known for writing the screenplay to the 2012 blockbuster, The Hunger Games, and his Academy Award-nominated screenplay for the 2013 film, Captain Phillips. Ray also worked with the advertising agency Barkley to help write the AMC Theatres 2021 "We Make Movies Better" campaign starring Nicole Kidman.^[8]

Filmography

Films

Year	Title	Director	Writer	Producer
1994	Color of Night	No	Yes	No
1995	The Shooter	No	Yes	No
1997	Volcano	No	Yes	No
1998	Legalese	No	Yes	No
2002	Hart's War	No	Yes	No
2003	Shattered Glass	Yes	Yes	No
2004	Suspect Zero	No	Yes	No
2005	Flightplan	No	Yes	No
2007	Breach	Yes	Yes	No
2009	State of Play	No	Yes	No
2012	The Hunger Games	No	Yes	No
2013	Captain Phillips	No	Yes	No
2015	The Breakup Girl	No	No	Yes
	Secret in Their Eyes	Yes	Yes	No
2018	Overlord	No	Yes	No
2019	Gemini Man	No	Yes	No
	Terminator: Dark Fate	No	Yes	Co-producer
	Richard Jewell	No	Yes	No
2026	The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping	No	Yes	No
TBA	Animals	No	Yes	No

Television

Year	Title	Director	Writer	Executive Producer	Notes
1994–1995	Earth 2	No	Yes	No	Co-creator
2016–2017	The Last Tycoon	Yes	Yes	Yes	Also developer
2020	The Comey Rule	Yes	Yes	Yes	Miniseries