Chris Terrio

American film director/screenwriter

Chris Terrio (born December 31, 1976) is an American screenwriter and film director. He is best known for writing the screenplay for the 2012 film Argo, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Terrio also won the Writers Guild Award for Best Adapted Screenplay of 2012 and was nominated for Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay, a BAFTA, and the 2013 Los Angeles Film Critics Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for this work. Terrio wrote the screenplay for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the follow up to Zack Snyder's Man of Steel, based on an earlier draft by David S. Goyer, and is credited as co writer for the 2017 film Justice League, alongside Joss Whedon for the theatrical cut and Zack Snyder and Will Beall for the 2021 director's cut for Warner Bros. He completed another screenplay, A Foreigner, based on an article by the journalist David Grann. Terrio also co wrote the script for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker with director J. J. Abrams.

Terrio was raised in a Catholic family in Staten Island, and graduated from St. Joseph by the Sea High School. He is of Italian, Irish, and Acadian descent. He graduated in 1997 from Harvard University, where he studied English literature and German phenomenology, lived in Adams House, and participated in the Harvard Radcliffe Dramatic Club and the Hasty Pudding Theatricals. Terrio attended University of Cambridge for his MLitt, but eventually decided to enroll in film school.

At age 26, Terrio directed the feature film Heights (Sony Pictures Classics, 2005), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It follows a pivotal twenty four hours in the interconnected lives of five New Yorkers. It stars Glenn Close, Elizabeth Banks, James Marsden and Jesse Bradford, and features Isabella Rossellini, George Segal and Rufus Wainwright in small roles. It was one of the final films produced by Ismail Merchant and Richard Hawley. The film won a "Best Independent Feature Film Casting" award from the Casting Society of America, USA in 2005. In 2010, he directed the episode "I Look Like Frankenstein", which was Episode 8 in Season 3 of Damages on FX. In 2002, he directed, wrote and produced a short film titled Book of Kings, which starred Aasif Mandvi among others. It premiered at the first annual Tribeca Film Festival in 2002.

Terrio has also edited the documentary short First Out. He worked on the Ivory–Merchant films (directed by James Ivory) Le Divorce and The Golden Bowl. He was also previously an assistant to Ivory. Terrio also served as an assistant director on the short film Equation, directed by Anuj Majumdar, and was also a grip on the short film Awake, directed by Lori Lovoy Goran. She won a DGA Student Film Award and a SXSW Competition Award for her documentary short film In Between Days.