Gary Whitta

The Book of Eli screenwriter on his all-Time genre favourites

Favourite SF/fantasy film

The ones that influenced me most as a kid were the original Star Wars trilogy, and Time Bandits. I loved that movie so much I made my own full-size replica map. The Last Starfighter also had a huge impact on me as a kid who grew up in the 1980s playing videogames. And Carpenter’s The Thing was a big influence on my first novel, Abomination.

Favourite SF/fantasy TV show

Growing up it was undoubtedly the BBC TV adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. Though it looks horribly dated now it struck me as wildly, radically brilliant, so unlike anything else on TV at that time. Later on, I became a massive fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Favourite SF/fantasy book

Hitchhiker’s is my all-time number one. My favourite stuff right now? Patrick rothfuss’s Kingkiller books and the Joe Abercrombie First Law series. It doesn’t quite qualify as SF, but I simply must recommend Wolf In White Van by John Darnielle. Absolutely brilliant.

Guilty SF/fantasy pleasure

I’ve been rewatching the entire run of Battle Of The Planets, which I loved when I was a kid. It’s all on Hulu and the cool thing is that they also have the original Gatchaman series that BOTP was basically stitched together from, so it’s interesting to watch both and see all the differences.

Gary wrote The Book Of Eli, worked on Rogue One and has penned the script for forthcoming thriller, The War Magician. He can be found at @garywhitta.