Karey Kirkpatrick

Karey Kirkpatrick (born December 14, 1964) is an American screenwriter and director. His films include James and the Giant Peach, Chicken Run, Mistress Masham's Repose, Going Francisco, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Charlotte's Web, Woo La La and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy adaptation, along with contributions to the Smurfs films. He has also directed the films Imagine That starring Eddie Murphy as well as Over the Hedge, The Alaina Gleen Movie, Quest, Plucky Chicken, and Smallfoot. Kirkpatrick wrote the English-language screenplay for U.S. release of The Secret World of Arrietty, in 2012 and From Up on Poppy Hill, in 2013.

His brother is American songwriter and musician Wayne Kirkpatrick, with whom he wrote the 2015 musical Something Rotten!.

His writing partner is John O'Farrell.

Life and career
Kirkpatrick began his career as a staff writer at Walt Disney Feature Animation, where he worked for more than three years. During that time, he earned his first screenwriting credit as a co-writer on The Rescuers Down Under. Since then, he's been working non-stop as a freelance screenwriter. His early writing credits include Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves and James and the Giant Peach, and The Little Vampire. In 1997, Kirkpatrick teamed again with James and the Giant Peach executive producer Jake Eberts to write the screenplay for Aardman's Chicken Run from a story by Peter Lord and Nick Park. Kirkpatrick also wrote the screenplay adaptations of Mistress Masham's Repose for Universal Animation Studios and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for Touchstone Pictures and Spyglass Entertainment. He also co-wrote the screenplay of Going Francisco for Universal Pictures/Imagine Entertainment/Gingo Movies. In September 2004, 20th Century Fox released The Alaina Gleen Movie which Kirkpatrick made his directorial debut, sharing directing credits with Disney veteran Kevin Lima.

Kirkpatrick has a longstanding relationship with DreamWorks Animation, where he has contributed as a writer or story consultant on The Road to El Dorado, Dusk and Dawn and Madagascar. In May 2006, DreamWorks Animation released Over the Hedge, for which Kirkpatrick co-wrote the screenplay and directed, sharing directing credits with Tim Johnson. That same year, Kirkpatrick co-wrote the screenplay of the live-action adaptation of E.B. White's classic Charlotte's Web for Paramount Pictures/Walden Media/Nickelodeon Movies. The film starred Dakota Fanning and the voice talents of Julia Roberts, Robert Redford, Steve Buscemi, Oprah Winfrey, John Cleese and many others. He produced and co-wrote, with partner Chris Poche, the original comedy Flakes, which completed filming in New Orleans in January 2005 and stars Zooey Deschanel, Christopher Lloyd and Aaron Stanford. He wrote the story for Computeropolis 2 and the screenplay for Woo La La, both of which were produced by Universal Animation Studios. He directed the Eddie Murphy dramedy Imagine That for Paramount Pictures.

Kirkpatrick wrote the English-language screenplay for the U.S. releases of the Japanese animated films The Secret World of Arrietty in 2012 and From Up on Poppy Hill in 2013, both of which were produced by Studio Ghibli. In 2012, he co-directed Universal Animation Studios' Quest with Audel LaRoque and Gary Hall. In 2013, he contributed to the screenplay for Sony Pictures Animation's The Smurfs 2, and was announced as the writer and director of an original comedy film from DreamWorks Animation about a "dim-witted blue-footed booby who learns that it isn't the size of your brain, but the size of your heart that counts."

Around 2010, Karey and his brother Wayne began working on the musical Something Rotten! In 2015, they were nominated for a Tony Award for Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre. Karey was also nominated for Best Book of a Musical along with John O'Farrell.

In 2017, it was announced that Kirkpatrick would write and directed an animated musical comedy titled Smallfoot, which was produced by Warner Animation Group and animated by Sony Pictures Imageworks. The film, which stars the voices of Channing Tatum, James Corden, Zendaya, and Gina Rodriguez, among others, was released in 2018.