Steven E. de Souza

De Souza started writing while in high school, and won a prize for an 8mm student film. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, he directed local TV, before relocating to Los Angeles where he landed a gig as a TV story writer and editor. De Souza scored big with his first feature screenplay "48 Hrs." (1982), which was co-written with director Walter Hill and others. Pairing Nick Nolte with Eddie Murphy, the film's action cop formula and wry sense of humor was a one-two combination that would serve de Souza well in future projects. Next, he turned out two serviceable scripts for Arnold Schwarzenegger, the noisy comic book yarn "Commando" (1985), whose pyrotechnics all but overshadowed de Souza's lighter touches, and the sci-fi thriller "Running Man" (1987), which again teamed him with "48 Hrs." producer Joel Silver. De Souza remained in Silver's camp, co-scripting the Bruce Willis action hits "Die Hard" (1988) and its sequel "Die Hard 2: Die Harder" (1990) as well as the slick police thriller "Ricochet" (1991). De Souza began his TV career writing scripts for "The Million Dollar Man" (ABC, 1973-78), and "Knight Rider" (NBC, 1982-86), the car fantasy featuring a computerized, indestructible Trans-Am which often upstaged human star David Hasselhoff. He then took on supervising producer chores for the sci-fi spinoff "V: The Series" (NBC, 1984-85) and "Supercarrier" (ABC, 1988). He scripted several TV-movies, including "The Renegades" (ABC, 1982), "The Spirit" (also produced, ABC, 1987), "K-9000" (also produced, Fox, 1991), a segment of "Tales from the Crypt" (also directed, HBO, 1991) and the pilot for the animated "Cadillacs and Dinosaurs" (also produced, CBS, 1993). The hard-working writer had mixed success in the 1990s, although he formed Souza Productions in 1991. His only nominal hit was "The Flintstones" (one of many writers, 1994). His other films--the actioners "Hudson Hawk" (1991, with Bruce Willis), "Beverly Hills Cop III" (1994, with Eddie Murphy) and "Judge Dredd" (1995, with Sylvester Stallone)--were disappointing, to put it mildly. De Souza made his big screen directorial debut helming the Jean-Claude Van Damme starrer "Street Fighter" (1994), for which he also wrote the script. Based on the popular video game, the poorly received action-adventure involved a band of street fighters on a covert mission to rescue hostages held by a psychotic warlord, played by the late Raul Julia in his final screen appearance.