Biography
James Bruner is an award-winning screen and television writer/producer recognized for crafting #1 feature films and television romantic dramas. His notable credits include the iconic Chuck Norris films Missing in Action (1984), Invasion U.S.A. (1985), The Delta Force (1986), and the Hallmark Channel romantic drama Ice Dreams (2009).
Freedom, an original screenplay co-written by James and his wife and partner Elizabeth Stevens, won the Best American Screenplay Award at the 8 & Halfilm Awards in Rome in 2022 and received an Honorable Mention from the Paris Film Awards the same year. It was also an Official Selection at the 2022 Malta Film Awards, Milan Gold Awards, and Hamburg Film Awards. Additionally, Freedom earned the Screenplay - Feature Award at the 2021 Prague International Film Festival and the 2021 World Film Carnival in Singapore. It was a finalist or selection at five other film festivals in 2021 and advanced to the second round of the 2020 Austin Film Festival script competition. The screenplay tells an epic story inspired by the thrilling, romantic, and tragic events of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. After reading it, several Freedom Fighters, including Academy Award-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, remarked, "I felt like I was there."
James and Elizabeth serve as Co-Executive Producers on Montford: The Chickasaw Rancher (2021), an epic biographical Western produced by The Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma, which premiered on Netflix in November 2021.
Ice Dreams, a Hallmark Channel romantic drama penned by James and Elizabeth, was nominated for the $100,000 Epiphany Prize at the 19th Annual MovieGuide® Awards. They also acted as Executive Producers on Looking for Mr. Right (2014), a Hallmark Channel romantic comedy.
The pair were hired by legendary producers Richard D. Zanuck and Lili Fini Zanuck to write and Executive Produce Pretty Boy Floyd, a feature film about the infamous Depression-era outlaw, based on their original research.
James and Elizabeth also wrote, produced, and directed the independent comedy feature Hollywood Dot Com (2007). They Co-Produced and Line-Produced the action/thriller Clean Sweep (2020) filmed in South Texas.
They collaborated with Columbia Tri-Star Television as writers and producers developing the one-hour drama series Delta Force 2000.
James’s first book, co-written with Elizabeth, Beeswing Makes Friends, is published by Archway Publishing in all formats. This entertaining and enlightening children’s picture book helps kids navigate major life changes with the help of Beeswing, a little magical golden dragon, and his human and fantastical friends.
James has prospected for gold in the Yukon Territory, taught advanced screenwriting to graduate students from across the Middle East and North Africa at the Red Sea Institute of Cinematic Arts (RSICA) in Aqaba, Jordan, and once wrestled a bear—and lived to tell the tale.
