CRAIG WARNER
... is a multiple award-winning playwright and screenwriter who lives and works in Suffolk, England.
He has written for film and television, stage and audio. His play Strangers on a Train, produced by Barbara Broccoli, ran in the West End to standing-room audiences.
He was nominated for a BAFTA for The Queen’s Sister, a WGA Award for Julius Caesar, and he won Best Writer at the Seoul International Drama Awards for The Last Days of Lehman Brothers. He has twice won Giles Cooper Awards for Best Plays of the Year for his audio dramas written for the BBC.
He runs the audio production company 25th Image, for which he produces and directs the two-hand comedy NIGHT GAMES about a pair of irrational, infantile men, one gay and one straight, trying to live together under a single roof. He stars in the comedy alongside Michael Maloney. Night Games has appeared in charts in more than nine different countries, rising to number 5 in Great Britain.
Warner has just finished his first novel, Dark Matter, a romantic thriller etched in the perverse rulebook of Quantum Physics.
He is also a composer and has written music and songs for a number of his works, including a full-length musical for BBC Radio 3 about the legend of Cassandra.
Craig Warner also paints in oil and water-based media, mostly exploring the figurative. He received a BA in philosophy from King’s College London and an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. He was born in Los Angeles.
Craig Warner wrote The Queen’s Sister for Channel 4, which was nominated for several BAFTA awards (including Best Single Drama), Maxwell for BBC2, which received a Broadcasting Press Guild Award nomination for Best Single Drama, and The Last Days of Lehman Brothers, which was longlisted for a BAFTA Craft Award for Best Writer and which won him the award for Best Writer at the Seoul International Drama Awards. He wrote the mini-series Julius Caesar for Warner Bros., which gained Warner a Writers Guild Award nomination for Best Original Long-Form Drama, and he performed a complete, uncredited production rewrite of The Mists of Avalon, also for Warner Bros. The mini-series was nominated for a Writers Guild Award and nine Emmys, including Best Mini-series. Warner also wrote the screenplay for Codebreaker, a film about Alan Turing.
Television and Film
SELECTED CREDITS
2021: Soho Square, television series for Rupert Everett and Expanded Media
2019: Happiness, feature film for Barbara Broccoli and Eon Productions
2016: Marlowe, television series for Eon Productions and Smuggler Entertainment
2014: Consuelo and Alva, feature film for Portobello Productions
2011: Codebreaker, Channel 4 – with Henry Goodman, Ed Stoppard
2009: The Last Days of Lehman Brothers, BBC2 – with James Cromwell, Ben Daniels, Corey Johnson, Alex Jennings, Michael Landes, Henry Goodman, Michael Brandon, James Bolam
2006: Maxwell, BBC2 – with David Suchet, Patricia Hodge, Dan Stevens
2004: The Queen's Sister, Channel 4 – with Lucy Cohu, Toby Stephens, David Threlfall
2002: Julius Caesar, Warner Bros./TNT – with Christopher Walken, Richard Harris, Jeremy Sisto, Valeria Golino, Chris Noth
2001: The Mists of Avalon (uncredited), Warner Bros./TNT – with Anjelica Huston, Joan Allen, Julianna Margulies
Cory Johnson and James Cromwell in THE LAST DAYS OF LEHMAN BROTHERS by Craig Warner, for BBC2.
Craig Warner started out writing for the theatre in New York City in his early 20s, where he wrote and directed his first intelligible one-act play for performance at Divine Theatre, a basement in the East Village.
His play Strangers on a Train, based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith, ran in London’s West End to standing-room only houses and starred Jack Huston, Laurence Fox, Miranda Raison, Imogen Stubbs, Christian McKay, and MyAnna Buring. It was directed by Robert Allan Ackerman and produced by Barbara Broccoli.
Craig recently created the podcast channel 25th Image and started producing his own work and the work of other creatives.
Theatre
SELECTED THEATRE
2013/14: Strangers on a Train, Gielgud Theatre, West End, London – with Jack Huston, Laurence Fox, Miranda Raison, Imogen Stubbs, Christian McKay, and MyAnna Buring. Directed by Robert Allan Ackerman. Produced by Barbara Broccoli.
2004: Disguises, Alabama Shakespeare Festival
2002: Fallen, Merrimack Theatre, Boston
1999: Love to Madeleine, Pleasance Theatre, Edinburgh Festival
1992: Caledonian Road, White Bear Theatre, London
1988: God's Country, Old Red Lion, London
1987: Matthias, Cooper Square Theatre, New York
1986: A Place to Watch Her Grow, Cooper Square Theatre, New York
Pedro Pascal in FALLEN by Craig Warner at the Merrimack Theatre.
MyAnna Buring in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN by Craig Warner at the Gielgud Theatre, London, West End.
Craig is committed to audio fiction and feels it to be a medium very close to his spirit, because of the interplay between the seen and the unseen.
His first radio play for BBC Radio 4, GREAT MEN OF MUSIC, was included in Radio 4’s first Young Playwrights Festival. His second audio play, BY WHERE THE OLD SHED USED TO BE, won the Giles Cooper Award for Best Radio Play of the Year, and it was published by Methuen. His play FIGURE WITH MEAT also won Best Play two years later.
Craig Warner is the award’s youngest ever winner, having received it for the first time when he was 24.
He recently created the podcast channel 25th Image and started producing his own work and the work of other creatives.
Craig plays Jack in the comedy NIGHT GAMES, about a straight man who knocks on a gay man’s door one night during a storm, and never leaves.
Craig is currently preparing the mystery-thriller VANISHING POINT, set in the near future, where a man and his AI attempt to look for his lost sister, his lost past, and his lost self.
He hopes to create not only a gripping mystery about a man seeking key truths about his own past, but a drama that will inform listeners about environmental issues while it engages and entertains.
Audio Fiction
SELECTED AUDIO AND RADIO CREDITS
2023: Night Games, returning serial for 25th Image – with Michael Maloney
2013: Tosca’s Kiss, BBC Radio 3 – with Stephen Dillane, Kate Fleetwood
1997: Agonies Awakening (book, music and lyrics), BBC Radio 3 – with Anton Lesser, Miles Anderson, Clare Holman, Hugh Quarshie, Josette Simon
1997: Agonies Awakening (book, music and lyrics), BBC Radio 3 – with Anton Lesser, Miles Anderson, Clare Holman, Hugh Quarshie, Josette Simon
1996: Beaumarchais, six-part serial, BBC Radio 4 – with Henry Goodman, Ronald Pickup, Bill Nighy, David Calder, Ron Cook
1996: Strangers on a Train, BBC Radio 4 – with Saskia Reeves, Michael Sheen, Anton Lesser, Bill Nighy
1995: The Mind-Body Problem, BBC Radio 4 – with Bill Nighy, Michael Maloney, Geraldine James
1993: A Romance, BBC Radio 4 – with Michael Maloney, Kristin Milward
1992: High Flyer, BBC Radio 4 – with Mick Ford
1992: A Sense of Things Moving Forward, BBC Radio 4/World Service – with Ben Kingsley, Frances Barber, Simon Russell Beale, Patrick Malahide
1991: Figure with Meat, BBC Radio 3 – with Clive Merrison, Judy Parfitt, Lynsey Baxter
1991: Piece, after Iain Banks, BBC Radio 5 – with Bill Paterson
1990: The Devil by Maupassant, BBC Radio 4 – with Ian Holm
1990: Love to Madeleine, BBC Radio 4 – with Richard E. Grant, Miranda Richardson, Phil Davis
1989: The Baptism by Maupassant, BBC Radio 3 – with Anton Lesser
1989: By Where the Old Shed Used to Be, BBC Radio 3 – with Miranda Richardson, Anton Lesser, Judy Parfitt
1988: Great Men of Music, BBC Radio 4 – with Phil Davis your text here...
Awards
2012: Winner – Best Production, EuroPAWS Science TV Audience Award, Codebreaker
2010: Winner – Best Writer, Seoul International Drama Awards, The Last Days of Lehman Brothers
2008: Nominated – Broadcasting Press Guild Awards, Best Single Drama, Maxwell
2006: Nominated – BAFTA TV Award, Best Single Drama, The Queen's Sister
2004: Nominated – Writers Guild of America, WGA Award (TV), Best Original Long-Form Drama, Julius Caesar
1998: Nominated – Verity Bargate Award, Soho Theatre, Dark Leaves
1997: Nominated – Vivian Ellis Prize, Kings Head Theatre, Agonies Awakening
1992: Nominated – European Broadcast Union Award, High Flyer
1991: Winner – BBC/Methuen Giles Cooper Awards, Best Radio Plays of the Year, Figure With Meat
1989: Winner – BBC/Methuen Giles Cooper Awards, Best Radio Plays of the Year, By Where the Old Shed Used to Be
