EXCLUSIVE: LBI Entertainment has signed for management the prolific Emmy winning writer, director and producer Danny Strong.
Strong, whose recent work includes Dopesick, Empire and Recount, is currently working on a classic Hollywood-era film for director Martin Scorsese starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence. Strong wrote the script on spec which was quickly taken off the market by LBI. Strong is also currently co-writing Ultra with Tony Kushner for Steven Spielberg, based on the Rachel Maddow podcast, Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra.
Strong’s resume includes pop culture successes like the Fox drama series Empire, which he co-created, served as exec producer and director of several episodes, but he is one of Hollywood’s stronger writers in hot button and political topics. He was the creator and showrunner of the Hulu series Dopesick, which starred Michael Keaton and focused on the Opioid scourge and the role of the Sackler family’s Purdue Pharma in spreading it. It won the Peabody award and was nominated for 14 Emmy Awards, winning two, and it was nominated for two Golden Globes, a PGA, Critics Choice as well as a DGA award nomination for Strong.
Strong’s breakout success came on the political track, as his script Recount, about the 2000 presidential election controversy in Florida, topped the Hollywood Blacklist. It was turned by HBO into an Emmy winning TV movie, with Strong winning the WGA award. Strong returned to that terrain at HBO with Game Change, about how Alaska governor Sarah Palin upended the candidacy of John McCain in 2008. That film won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, Peabody, WGA Award and PGA Award.
On the feature side, Strong scripted Lee Daniels’ The Butler, the sleeper hit that starred Forrest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey, and co-wrote The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, parts one and two. Strong in 2017 made his feature directorial debut on his script Rebel in the Rye, which starred Nicholas Hoult, Hope Davis, and Sarah Paulson and premiered at Sundance.
Strong has also written multiple stage musicals including Galileo, and he wrote a new book to the musical Chess. Both shows are eyeing Broadway runs.
Strong turned to writing after starting his career as an actor in film and TV shows including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gilmore Girls. He most recently played Todd Krakow on Billions.
He continues to be agented by CAA and lawyered by Jackoway Austen Tyerman.
