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"What we wanted to do was come up with a story that would make an audience feel that way, no matter how old they were. There are story elements to the ride, and a lot of them appear in the movie, but it wasn’t about adapting the story. It was about creating a movie for which the audience experience of the movie was similar to the audience experience of the source material. The emotions generated by the original material."
―Ted Elliott[src]

Theodore "Ted" Elliott (born July 4, 1961) is an American screenwriter. Along with his writing partner Terry Rossio, Elliott has written some of the most successful films, including Aladdin, Shrek and Pirates of the Caribbean.

Biography[]

Early career[]

In 2004, he was elected to the Board of Directors of the Writers Guild of America; his term on the board ended in 2006. Along with fellow former board member Craig Mazin, Elliott runs The Artful Writer, a website aimed at professional screenwriters. He is also a co-founder with Terry Rossio of Wordplay a.k.a. Wordplayer.com, one of the premier screenwriting sites on the Internet.

Since 1986, Elliott and Rossio have been members of the Writers Guild of America, West. In 1992, the pair co-wrote the highest-grossing film of the year, the Disney animated feature Aladdin, starring Robin Williams. Their live-action feature-film credits include Little Monsters, starring Fred Savage; Small Soldiers, starring Kirsten Dunst; Godzilla, starring Matthew Broderick; and The Mask of Zorro, starring Antonio Banderas and Anthony Hopkins.

In 1996, Elliott and Rossio became the first writers signed to an overall writing and producing deal at DreamWorks SKG. Their animated projects at DreamWorks, in addition to Shrek, include The Road to El Dorado, featuring Kevin Kline and Kenneth Branagh; Antz (creative consultants), featuring Woody Allen; and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (creative consultants), featuring Brad Pitt and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio wrote one of the most successful trilogies in motion-picture history, with the Walt Disney Pictures/Jerry Bruckheimer Films productions of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. They also worked with Jerry Bruckheimer as screenwriters of G-Force and received story credit on National Treasure: Book of Secrets. Elliott and Rossio also wrote the DreamWorks animated feature Shrek, winner of the first Academy Award for Best Animated Film in 2002.

Pirates of the Caribbean[]

"The experience Terry and I had is what every single writer dreams of. For a writer, being on set every day is unheard of. From beginning to end, it was terrific. To be able to talk to the director, the producer, the actors and even someone like the Walt Disney Pictures Presents makeup artist, to ask questions and find out why things are done a certain way, was such a wonderful education. It was gratifying to realize the imagination and creativity each crew member put into the movie. From set design to costumes and makeup, seeing the production unfold on set was better than anything we made up and put on paper."
―Ted Elliott[src]

Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio wrote one of the most successful trilogies in motion-picture history, with the Walt Disney Pictures/Jerry Bruckheimer Films productions of Gore Verbinski's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.

Ted Elliott was one of the four writers for The Curse of the Black Pearl, and worked with his writing partner Terry Rossio on the sequels, Dead Man's Chest, At World's End, and the fourth film On Stranger Tides, as well as the short film Tales of the Code: Wedlocked. After the making of On Stranger Tides, it was announced that Terry Rossio would write a screenplay for Pirates of the Caribbean 5, but without the assistance of Elliott.[1] However, Rossio himself would be replaced by Jeff Nathanson in 2013.

PotC Films[]

External links[]

Notes and references[]

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