Erik Jendresen


Erik Jendresen is an American author, playwright, screenwriter and producer. His projects include HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, executive produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, Killing Lincoln, co-produced with Tony and Ridley Scott for the National Geographic Channel; a series based on the Francis Ford Coppola film, The Conversation ; The Pony Express ; an eight-hour adaptation of Gregory Maguire's novel, Wicked ; an eight-hour miniseries Majestic-12; and The Command - a series set in the world of the Joint Special Operations Command. He also co-wrote the seventh and eighth installments of the Mission: Impossible film series with McQuarrie.

Career

As co-creator, lead writer and a supervising producer of the critically acclaimed mini-series Band of Brothers for HBO in 2001, Jendresen was one of the recipients of that year's Emmy Award for "Outstanding Miniseries", which he shared with Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, among others. Jendresen also shared an Emmy nomination for that show in the category of "Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special". The show also resulted in a Golden Globe Award for "Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television", and 20 other awards, including the Peabody Award.
As a writer/ producer for film, his current projects include The Mariner ; Mission: Blacklist ; Saint-Ex ; Aloft ; Solo ; and an adaptation of Walter Tevis's The Man Who Fell to Earth. Earlier film projects include Star Trek: The Beginning, Sublime, starring Tom Cavanagh and Kathleen York, Otis and The Big Bang, and Ithaca - an adaptation of William Saroyan's The Human Comedy.
As a writer, producer, and showrunner for television, his current projects include Special, a series based on documentary filmmakers of the 1960s ; a series based on the stories of the French Foreign Legion ; The War, a five-season series about the unending interconnected conflicts of the 20th century ; The 43, a six-hour mini-series about WWII British ex-servicemen fighting fascism on their home soil ; A Coloured Man's Reminiscences, an eight-hour miniseries chronicling the story of James Madison’s slave, Paul Jennings ; Castner's Cutthroats, a six-hour miniseries about the Battle of the Aleutians ; Rocket Men, a ten-hour miniseries about Wernher von Braun and the men who took us to the moon and beyond; Climb to Conquer, a ten-hour miniseries about the 10th Mountain Division in World War II ; and Shot All to Hell, a four-hour miniseries about the James-Younger Gang and the Northfield, Minnesota, raid.
Jendresen also has authored several books, several dealing with the socio-anthropology of Peru and the Amazon Basin, including Dance of the Four Winds and its sequel, Island of the Sun, and the children's book, The First Story Ever Told. Hanuman is a re-telling for children of a portion of the Ramayana.
Jendresen co-wrote Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning with director Christopher McQuarrie. McQuarrie and Jendresen have also been working on an as-yet untitled film with Tom Cruise, which McQuarrie described in 2022 as being "gnarlier" than the Mission: Impossible films and as "something we've talked about for a really long time. It's way outside of what you're used to seeing Tom do.".
He is also a playwright.

Personal life

Jendresen lives in Charlotte, North Carolina and Sausalito, California, aboard the M.V. Hindeloopen, a 119-year-old riveted wrought iron vessel which saw service during the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940. He is married to Venus Madora Aslee Bobis, a psychotherapist and his partner in Pilothouse Pictures.

Filmography

Film
YearTitleWriterProducer
2002Crazy as Hell
2011The Big Bang
2015Ithaca
2023Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
2025Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning

Direct-to-video
YearTitleWriterCo-Producer
2007Sublime
2008Otis

TV movies
YearTitleWriterExecutive producer
2000Deadlocked
2013Killing Lincoln

TV series
YearTitleWriterExecutive producerNotes
2001Band of Brothers3 episodes