Gary Whitta

Gary Leslie Whitta (born 21 July 1972) is an English-American screenwriter, author, game designer, and video game journalist. Whitta was the screenwriter of film The Book of Eli (2010), co-wrote the film After Earth (2013) with M. Night Shyamalan, and also co-developed the story for Rogue One (2016). He was the editor-in-chief of both the UK and US editions of PC Gamer magazine, was a contributor to the gaming magazine ACE, and also developed the game, Lewdle a take on the popular Wordle game.

Whitta began his career as a writer and games journalist for ACE magazine. When ACE closed down in 1992, he became deputy editor of The One for Amiga Games and was involved with founding the original PC Gamer magazine in the UK. He subsequently served as the editor of Total Football. A few years later, he moved to the United States to become editor-in-chief of the newer, US version, of PC Gamer.

Whitta has a lengthy history of working with print and online journals of many types, in addition to his role in founding PC Gamer. ACE magazine was owned by UK publisher Future Publishing, and in early 2000 Whitta worked with Future to establish a film magazine, Total Movie magazine. Due to financial difficulties at the publisher, Total Movie was canceled after only four issues in early 2001.

While no longer managing or editing, Whitta still contributes game reviews and opinion pieces for a number of gaming publications. His articles can be found in various places, including PC Gamer and 1Up.com. He also shows up in industry podcasts, for example with Tested.com, PC Gamer and Next Generation.

In addition to contributing to periodicals, Whitta has written a number of screenplays and TV episodes. A partial list, including the text of those which were not picked up, could at one time be found on his homepage.

Whitta has found Hollywood success as the screenwriter of the film The Book of Eli. He was also working on a script known as the "Monkey Project" with Chris Weston, which would have reimagined the classic Buddhist novel Journey to the West (and the related classic television series Monkey) as an animated series. However, Weston pulled out of the project.

He wrote the script for the action thriller film Undying. His latest screenwriting work was the sci-fi film After Earth. He was hired to script the first Star Wars stand-alone film, Rogue One, directed by Gareth Edwards. On 9 January 2015, he was announced to have amicably parted ways with the film.

On 27 October 2016, Variety reported that Warner Bros., Village Roadshow and Team Downey had put together a writers' room for the third of the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes movies, with several top names, including Whitta, Nicole Perlman, Justin Malen, Geneve Dworet-Robertson and Kieran Fitzgerald.