Paul Pender

Paul Pender graduated from Glasgow University in Scotland with a degree in Law and an Honors degree in English Literature. He successfully avoided a legal career by attending the prestigious National Film and Television School, where he wrote, produced and directed the award-winning comedy drama The Game, which was broadcast on the UK's ITV network and sold throughout the world.

After working in London as a journalist, where he won the Cosmopolitan Young Journalist of the Year award, Paul worked at the BBC for 5 years, as a script editor and producer, on network drama developed won numerous awards. He developed and produced Franz Kafka’s It’s A Wonderful Life, starring Richard E Grant, which won both a BAFTA Award and the 1995 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short.

As a screenwriter, Paul's work includes the TV film Beautiful Lies, portraying an imagined encounter between H.G. Wells and George Orwell, starring Sir Richard Todd and Jon Finch. He also wrote the acclaimed comedy film The Bogie Man, starring Robbie Coltrane and Craig Ferguson.

These two films won Paul BAFTA nominations for Best Writer, The Bogie Man also being nominated as Best Single Drama.

For Central Films he wrote The Leper of Saint Giles, a feature-length film starring Sir Derek Jacobi, which became the U.S. pilot for the acclaimed Brother Cadfael series. Paul also wrote several episodes of The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne , a major television series screened to great acclaim on the Scy- Fy Channel.

For the BBC, with his brother Allan, he produced Somebody Else’s War, an award-winning documentary about the Bosnian conflict, and for ITV he wrote, produced and narrated the award-winning reality series, Faith, Hope… Calamity, an acclaimed comic history of the Scottish national football team and an exploration of the national psyche. Supporting that team gave Pender his lifelong fascination with tragi-comedy.

Paul developed his screenplay Evelyn for Pierce Brosnan. It was produced by Infinity Media, beginning his fruitful association with the company. The movie, distributed by MGM/UA, was directed by Bruce Beresford and starred Brosnan, along with Julianna Margulies, Aidan Quinn, Stephen Rea and Alan Bates. It won the prestigious Christopher Award for "affirming the highest values of the human spirit" and also won Movieguide's Epiphany Award as the most inspirational film of the year.

Paul was the original writer on Nacho Libre starring Jack Black, which began as a thin brown guy wreslting with spiritual truth, and ended as a fat white guy wrestling with Mexican midgets.

Paul is currently developing Diva – a biopic about the great British opera star Kathleen Ferrier with Bruce Beresford directing. With Infinity, Paul is developing the TV show THE SETTLEMENT for production in the summer of 2012, as well as numerous projects for Infinity’s Television Division, which Paul now heads. The feature film he developed, SHADOW PEOPLE, is currently in post-production.

Paul’s book The Butler Did It has just been published in the UK by Mainstream Publishing (a division of Random House) in May 2012, and has surprised people by being a funny book about a serial killer.