Screenwriter John Logan to be Honored by Irish in Film

Oscar-nominated screenwriter and Tony Award winner John Logan will be lauded at the Oscar Wilde: Honoring the Irish in Film awards-season event, it was announced Monday.

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Logan joins actresses Michelle Williams and Melissa McCarthy as those to be saluted at the seventh annual shindig set for Feb. 23 — the Thursday before the Academy Awards — at Bad Robot, J.J. Abrams’ Santa Monica production company.

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The son of emigrants from Northern Ireland, the Chicago-born Logan has received Oscar nominations for his original screenplays for Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator (2004) and Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000), an Oscar winner for best picture.

Logan is coming off a busy year with the screenplays for 2011 releases Hugo, another Scorsese film; animation hit Rango; and Ralph Fiennes’ Coriolanus. Next up: the screenplays for Skyfall, the latest James Bond film, and Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln and a collaboration with Patti Smith on a film version of the rocker's best-selling book, Just Kids.

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Logan’s resume also includes Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday (1999), Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) and Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007). He won a Tony Award in 2010 for RED.

“The diversity of John’s work is especially impressive from adaptations of books and plays like Hugo and Coriolanus to legacy franchises like James Bond and Star Trek to epics like Gladiator and The Aviator,” said Trina Vargo, president of the nonprofit US-Ireland Alliance, which stages the event.

“His background as a playwright comes through in his attention to dialogue and language. And he gravitates to dark characters — maybe that’s the Northern Ireland in him.”