Christopher Markus

Going from Narnia to the Marvel Universe isn't a trip a lot of people get to make, but Christopher Markus got the once-in-a-lifetime chance to do so when he finished up working on three "Chronicles of Narnia" movies as a screenwriter and then went over to work on Captain America and Thor movies for Marvel. Working with his longtime partner Stephen McFeely, Markus carved a role as a reliable screenwriter for well-received blockbuster movies. Markus took his time becoming a screenwriter, though, going to Rutgers University for his undergraduate degree and then going to University of California at Davis for his Master's. It was there that he met his writing partner McFeely. However, it took many years past Markus' 1996 graduation from UC Davis before he was officially a professional writer. In the early 2000s, the pair pitched HBO for "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers" (2004), a made-for-TV movie starring Geoffrey Rush as Sellers that wound up garnering Markus and McFeely an Emmy Award. They followed that up with "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" (2005), the first of three big-budget Narnia movies from Disney. They worked on the film's two sequels, "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" (2008) and "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" (2010), though they only did a draft of the latter as they were let go from the project during the 2008 Writers Guild Strike. While working on the Narnia movies, they also wrote a crime comedy called "You Kill Me" (2007) that starred Tea Leoni and Ben Kingsley. After their time in Narnia, the writing partners started working in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, first writing "Captain America: The First Avenger" (2011) before working on "Thor: The Dark World" (2013) and "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" (2014) back-to-back. At the same, they also wrote "Pain & Gain" (2013), an action comedy directed by Michael Bay and starring Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson. After the commercial and critical success of "Captain America: The Winter Soldier," it was announced that Markus and McFeely were signed to write the third Captain America movie, set for a 2016 release.