Three Great Things: Scott Z. Burns

Scott Z. Burns is an award-winning screenwriter, producer, director and playwright. His new Audible Original podcast, What Could Go Wrong?, is out now. He is the writer, director, executive producer and creator of the Apple TV+ series Extrapolations, starring Meryl Streep, Forest Whitaker, Edward Norton and Marion Cotillard. In film, Burns’ writing credits include The Bourne Ultimatum as well as The Informant!, Contagion, Side Effects and The Laundromat for director Steven Soderbergh. As a director, Burns’ credits include PU-239, starring Oscar Isaac and Paddy Considine, and The Report, starring Adam Driver, Annette Bening and Jon Hamm, which tells the story of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program. Burns served as a producer for the Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, as well as an executive producer for An Inconvenient Sequel and Sea of Shadows. On stage, Burns’ play The Library, which deals with a high school shooting, was produced at the Public Theater and was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award for best new American play. Burns began his career in advertising; before leaving the industry, he was part of the team that created the “Got Milk?” campaign.