Kirk DeMicco

Kirk DeMicco (born 1969/1970) is an American screenwriter, director and producer. He is best known for writing and directing Space Chimps and The Croods.

Raised in Wyckoff, New Jersey and a former resident of Franklin Lakes, DeMicco attended Ramapo High School.

Journalism
After graduation in 1991 from the University of Southern California, where he double majored in economics and political science, he spent three years in Italy, where he worked as a journalist, interviewing individuals involved in the Italian movie industry for an Italian film-business magazine. After returning to the United States, he worked for the William Morris Agency in New York City, before relocating to the firm's office in Los Angeles in a transfer arranged by talent agent Lee Stollman.

Screenwriting and directing
DeMicco's first script sale was called "A Day in November" which he sold to Warner Bros. and producer Arnold Kopelson for $1 million before signing to write Quest for Camelot. Later he wrote and co-produced Racing Stripes for director Frederik Du Chau. John Cleese and DeMicco co-wrote the film adaptation of the Roald Dahl's children classic The Twits. He also wrote "Splitting Adam" a movie that was set up at United Artists. He then worked as a writer on Here Comes Peter Cottontail: The Movie and later worked on Casper's Scare School. In 2008, he wrote and directed the movie Space Chimps for John H. Williams and his company Vanguard Animation; the film is inspired by the first chimpanzee to go to space, Ham. While working at Warner Bros., he and Du Chau also wrote a script for the upcoming live-action–animated film based on the Hanna-Barbera character, Hong Kong Phooey, which they sold to Alcon Entertainment. He adapted the Jack Kirby comic New Gods, and collaborated with filmmaker Barry Sonnenfeld on an adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel. He has also done many production rewrites for Disney, Warner Bros., DreamWorks and Spyglass. In television, he is the creator and executive producer of the Discovery Channel documentary HALO: Freefall Warriors.

In 2013, DeMicco co-wrote and co-directed DreamWorks Animation's The Croods with Chris Sanders. DeMicco began writing the film with John Cleese in 2005. The Croods grossed over $582 million worldwide at the box office, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. DeMicco and Sanders then worked on The Croods sequel for three and a half years, before its cancellation in late 2016, until it was revived a year later. In December 2016, it was reported that DeMicco was directing Vivo for Sony Pictures Animation scheduled for release in December 2020. Lin-Manuel Miranda will write new songs for this musical animated feature.

Filmography

 * Quest for Camelot (1998) (Writer)
 * Racing Stripes (2005) (Writer, co-producer)
 * Here Comes Peter Cottontail: The Movie (2005) (writer)
 * Casper's Scare School (2006) (writer)
 * Space Chimps (2008) (Director, writer)
 * The Croods (2013) (Co-director, writer)
 * The Star (2017) (Creative consultant)
 * Vivo (2020) (Director)