John Fusco - Screenwriter

John Fusco (Screenwriter)

Although born in Waterbury, Connecticut, John Fusco left home at 16 years old to travel the American South in search of authentic Delta blues music.  He composed original songs and performed in road bands until he was 21 when he returned to night school and received his GED.  Intent on pursuing his first love of dramatic writing, Fusco was accepted into NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.  His first two student screenplays won national awards, the second becoming the 1986 Delta blues cult film Crossroads.

Fusco would then go on to write the box office hit Young Guns (1988) and its sequel Young Guns II (1990).  His deep interest in Native American subject matter would lead to his writing Thunderheart (1992), the Academy Award-nominated Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2000), the ABC mini-series Dreamkeeper (2003), and the Arabian horse race adventure Hidalgo (2004) for which he received the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America.

Fusco also wrote the novel “Paradise Salvage” (Simon and Schuster), a multi-generational coming-of-age tale that has been published in seven countries.

No stranger to stories that explore cultural myths and legend, it is no surprise that Fusco’s childhood love of Chinese culture and martial arts has found its way into his most recent original scrīpt, The Forbidden Kingdom.  Fusco began studying Korean martial arts when he was 12 years old, a year before the “Kung Fu TV” series and the films of Bruce Lee would create an explosion of martial arts popularity in the U.S.  While always more interested in the philosophical side of martial art, Fusco longed to study Chinese kungfu but could not find the authentic art until 7 years ago when he began studying Northern Shaolin Kungfu with a sifu in the U.S..  He has since studied in China with Shifu Yi Shen Guo.

Fusco’s next projects include Wolf Brother, his adaptation of the popular young adult novel for Ridley Scott, a contemporary remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai for the Weinstein Co. and a new original screenplay The Cage, set in the world of Mixed Martial Arts.

He lives on a farm with his wife and son in Northern Vermont.