Scott Moore

Two heads are often better than one, and Scott Moore, along with his screenwriting partner Jon Lucas, wrote one of the biggest comedies of all time, "The Hangover" (2009). Their success was nearly a decade in the making, but when the team hit, they really hit big with a comedy that launched many imitations, and a successful franchise. Moore graduated from The University of Colorado in 1989 with an economics degree, but he was fascinated by film, even though the school didn't have a big cinema department. As it turned out this was not a disadvantage, because with a smaller film division, Moore could get more hands on experience and access to the equipment. Moore's first taste of Hollywood was an intern position at Disney when he got out of school. At first he wanted to be a producer, then figured it would be more fun to be a writer. Moore and his future partner, Jon Lucas, at first wrote separately, but they did much better when they got together, realizing they had a strong chemistry that worked. Both Moore and Lucas ended working for Daniel Petrie Jr., the screenwriter of "Beverly Hills Cop" (1984), and they would eventually write a comedy that would surpass "Cop" as one of the biggest comedies of all time. Moore and Lucas got a lot of work doing uncredited rewrites of hit comedies including "The Wedding Crashers" (2005) and "27 Dresses" (2008). Then the duo heard a wild true story of a Hollywood producer who went on an insane bender during his bachelor party, culminating with the producer waking up in a strip club, having no idea how he got there, with a bouncer standing over him, furious over a large unpaid bill. It was the perfect conceit for a comedy, and Moore and Lucas didn't feel bachelor party movies had been done well before. Released on June 5, 2009, "The Hangover" was a huge runaway hit, becoming the #10 grossing film of the year, and making $467 million on a budget of $35 million, an enormous return on investment. "The Hangover" even won a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Musical or Comedy in 2010. Wary of repeating themselves, Moore and Lucas stepped away from "The Hangover" series and went on to write "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" (2009), and "The Change-Up" (2011). The team also created the TV comedy "Mixology" (ABC 2013 -). It was another comedy about drinking, this time about five strangers coming together in a bar over the course of one evening, spread over the length of a season.