Max Brooks - Biography

Maximillian Michael "Max" Brooks (born May 22, 1972) is an American author and screenwriter, with a particular interest in zombies. Brooks is also a television and voice-over actor.

Biography

Early life and education

Brooks was born in New York City, the son of the Jewish American director, producer, writer, and actor Mel Brooks and Italian American actress Anne Bancroft.

He is a graduate of Pitzer College, majoring in history, and delivered the commencement speech for the class of 2011.

Writing

From 2001 to 2003, Brooks was a member of the writing team at Saturday Night Live.

Brooks is the author of The Zombie Survival Guide. The book touches on what it describes as pop cultural myths about zombies. The book was later followed up in 2009 by The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks, a graphic novel depicting several of the events detailed in the book's latter section.

Brooks' book World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, which deals with the war between the human race and zombies, was released on September 12, 2006. Paramount Pictures has acquired the movie rights; Brad Pitt's production company Plan B Entertainment will produce the film. In the October 2006 issue of Fangoria Magazine, Brooks stated that he will not be writing the screenplay for the motion picture, as he feels he is not an accomplished enough screenwriter to "do it right" (J. Michael Straczynski is writing the screenplay).

Brooks wrote the introduction for the hardcover collected edition of Dynamite Entertainment's zombie miniseries Raise the Dead released in 2007.

The New Dead, a 2010 anthology of previously unpublished zombie stories edited by Christopher Golden, contains an additional World War Z story titled "Closure, LTD."

In 2010, Brooks wrote the IDW comic book mini-series G.I. Joe: Hearts & Minds.

Acting and voice-over work

Brooks has a number of other creative credits. As an actor, he has been seen in Roseanne, To Be or Not to Be, Pacific Blue, and 7th Heaven. He also has a career voicing animation; his voice has been featured in the animated shows Batman Beyond, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, and Justice League. During the start of the 3rd season of Lost Tapes, he was cast as himself in the zombie episode, telling the audience about how zombies come to be. He also appeared on Spike TV series "Deadliest Warrior", in which he represented the zombie team in the "Vampires vs Zombies" episode, as one of the Zombie experts along with Matt Mogk the Founder of the Zombie Research Society.

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