Paul Wernick
Paul Wernick is a Canadian screenwriter and producer. He is best known for writing the screenplays for Zombieland (2009), Deadpool (2016), Deadpool 2 (2018), and Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) with his creative partner Rhett Reese.
Wernick has produced several network reality shows, including CBS's Big Brother 2 and ABC's I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!. Wernick won three Emmy Awards for his work in news, which included producing stints at KVOA, KOLD, KTVK, KSL, and KCAL.
Big Brother 2 inspired Wernick and Rhett Reese, a screenwriter friend of his brother back from Phoenix, Arizona, where both attended high school, to create their own take on reality television, The Joe Schmo Show. Broadcast on Spike TV, the series earned the highest ratings for the channel. The Joe Schmo Show was also named on numerous Best Of lists, including Time magazine's "Top 10 TV Shows of 2003" and Entertainment Weekly's "50 Best TV Shows Ever on DVD."
In 2004, Reese and Wernick created and executive-produced Stuck on ODB, a comedy reality show starring Ol' Dirty Bastard (ODB) of the Wu Tang Clan for Spike TV. However, ODB died before the show ever aired. A year later, Wernick and Reese followed up with Invasion Iowa, a high-concept, high-stakes comedy hybrid starring William Shatner. The show premiered on Spike on March 29, 2005.
Wernick and Reese's first feature collaboration was the 2009 film Zombieland, which they created and also executive-produced. The film was released by Sony Pictures on October 2, 2009, and became the highest-grossing zombie film at the time.
Wernick and Reese followed Zombieland with Paramount Pictures' G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013), starring Dwayne Johnson, Channing Tatum, and Bruce Willis. The sequel outperformed the original, grossing $375 million.
In February 2012, it was announced Universal Studios had acquired Wernick and Reese's script for a feature film adaptation of Cowboy Ninja Viking. In September 2012, their original science fiction spec screenplay Epsilon was sold to Sony Pictures, with plans to co-produce with Michael De Luca. In April 2015, Wernick and Reese had optioned Thomas Oliver's book The Real Coke, The Real Story to produce a film about the failed launch of New Coke.
