Melisa Wallack

Melisa Wallack was a successful businesswoman before she became a screenwriter, founding Minneapolis document management and data discovery company Night Owl with her sister, Andrea, in 1991. She moved to Los Angeles in 1995 to launch their west coast operations and due to her proximity to Hollywood started to socialize with more and more writers. She teamed up with aspiring screenwriter Craig Borten and they turned his interviews with AIDS activist Ron Woodroof into the script for "Dallas Buyers Club" (2013). Unfortunately, despite interest in the script, the film didn't go straight into production. Wallack and Borten continued to work together on several other fact-based dramas. 2005 saw Wallack named as one of Variety's '10 Screenwriters to Watch,' and she finally got her first project "Meet Bill" (starring Aaron Eckhart, Jessica Alba and Elizabeth Banks) off the ground in 2007; she also co-directed with her husband Bernie Goldmann. Wallack got a story credit for "Mirror Mirror: The Untold Adventures of Snow White" (2012), a big budget retelling of the classic fairytale starring Julia Roberts and Lily Collins. Meanwhile, Wallack and Borten's "Dallas Buyers Club" script still had traction in Hollywood. At various points Brad Pitt, Ryan Gosling and Woody Harrelson were attached to the film but they finally found their Ron Woodroof in Matthew McConaughey. The film was eventually released nearly 20 years after it was written picking up Wallack and Borten an Academy Award nomination along the way.