Goddard writes and produces across film and television. The Martian turns a survival novel into a procedural comedy without losing the science, World War Z restructured a difficult adaptation, and Daredevil established the tone of a street level superhero series. He is adapting Project Hail Mary.
He came up writing for genre television under showrunners known for sharp ensemble dialogue, an apprenticeship that shows in how he handles group scenes. He has also directed, including a horror film built on a structural conceit about genre itself. Adaptation is a recurring part of his work, and he is unusually good at identifying what a novel's actual engine is.
Recurring subjects: competence under pressure, institutions failing the people inside them, and humour used to make an audience comfortable before something bad happens. His dialogue is fast and functional, and his structures favour clear escalation with information released on a schedule.
His survival adaptation drew major awards attention and demonstrated that a science heavy novel could be filmed without simplification. His superhero series set the template for a darker, grounded strand of the genre on television, and its influence on the tone of subsequent adaptations was immediate.
For viewers who care about how a script is built. Suited to readers comparing an adaptation with its source, and to anyone who likes genre stories where the characters are good at their jobs.
Large-scale hard science fiction and first contact, with suspense built from deduction, isolation, and the idea that contact is translation, not conquest. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller direct Ryan Gosling in the adaptation of Andy Weir, where math, wit, and practical creature work keep the pace human.
Ridley Scott directs a tense, problem-solving science fiction survival tale adapted from Andy Weir. After an astronaut is stranded on Mars, he uses methodical science to diagnose and outwit each crisis, with Matt Damon keeping the tone sardonic, oddly cheerful, and stubbornly hopeful.
Zombies hit with blockbuster scale, and Marc Forster steers a momentum-first disaster ride led by Brad Pitt as he tracks a pandemic’s origin from Philadelphia to Jerusalem, then into a sharply different, mostly single-building final act.
