John Harrison, Dune Director and Screenplay Writer

Dune Director and Screenplay Writer John Harrison launched his film career directing rock videos and acting as 1st Assistant Director for renowned horror director George A. Romero. Harrison went on to pen and direct numerous episodes of Romero's and producer Richard P. Rubinstein's classic TV series Tales From The Darkside. Harrison later directed Tales From The Darkside, The Movie, a Rubinstein production for Paramount Pictures that netted him the Grand Prix du Festival at Avoriaz, France. Harrison's other writing and directing credits include Tales from the Crypt, Earth 2, Profiler, and a USA Network world premiere movie, Donor Unknown, as well as the world premiere for the Starz/Encore Network movie, The Assassination File, starring Sherylin Fenn. This year, Harrison's first script for an animated movie, Dinosaur, opened to a blockbuster success for Disney. Harrison has also written screenplays for Robert Zemeckis and Richard Donner. The Writers Guild of America and the Houston International Film Festival have lauded Harrison with awards for writing and directing.

Harrison, a Pittsburgh native, was schooled at Lehigh University and Boston's Emerson College, with a degree in theater. Harrison attended graduate school at Carnegie Mellon, where he earned an MFA. Harrison began his odyssey through the film world with acting, before diverting his career to production, writing and directing.

Upon returning to Pittsburgh, Harrison formed a film production company with fellow filmmakers Dusty Nelson and Pasquale Buba, and their work soon brought them to the attention of Romero and partner Rubinstein. Over the next few years Harrison teamed up with Rubinstein and Romero on numerous projects that led to assignments on Creepshow, Day of the Dead and ultimately an offer from Rubinstein to direct his first feature length film, Tales From The Darkside, The Movie. That film united the talents of many current members of the Dune production team: Rubinstein, executive producer Mitchell Galin, producer David Kappes, effects supervisor Ernest Farino, and the KNB Effects team.

After executive producers Rubinstein and Galin asked Harrison to embark upon the road to Dune some three years ago, Harrison declared that the symposium of talent and personality of the cast and crew converged at the right time. Harrison's handpicked team banded together for what Harrison called the real Dune star: the story.

Said Harrison, " Dune is an adventure novel to me. It is called sci-fi, but I would rather think of it as speculative fiction. An adventure epic."

Said actor Alec Newman (Paul Atreides) of Harrison: "You know, I really trust him. He takes you with him on this sort of trip of his imagination. And he's just a joy to work with, and to talk with and great for the actors. He's very much an actor's director as well as everything else."