JAMES V. HART (J.V.) was born in Shreveport, Louisiana and grew up in Ft. Worth Texas on Drive-In Movies and Saturday Matinees.

His writing/producing credits include; Hook, directed by Steven Spielberg based on an idea by Hart’s then 6 year old son, Jake, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Muppet Treasure Island, directed by Brian Henson, and Contact, directed by Robert Zemeckis.

Other writing/producing credits include: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Tuck Everlasting, Jack And The Beanstalk: The Real Story. Sahara, Lara Croft: Tombraider – The Cradle Of Life, August Rush, Epic, and the TV series, Crossbones, which he created and developed.

The Hot Zone, the acclaimed series for Nat Geo based on Richard Preston’s best selling book, was created by Hart, who also shared writing and story credits on each episode and served as an Executive Producer.

Hart is a co-founder of the Peter Pan Children’s Fund, a non-profit that fosters youth philanthropy supporting Children’s Hospitals, has served on the Meadows School of the Arts board at SMU, is a founding member of the Writer’s Guild Initiative board, and founder of Lionfish University, a non-profit .org dedicated to reef preservation and conservation.

His renowned story mapping tool, TheHartChart, and the HartChart toolkit, were launched online and in print at the 2015 Austin Film Festival.