Joe Penhall

Joe Scott Penhall (born 1967) is an English-Australian playwright and screenwriter, best known for his award-winning stage play Blue/Orange, the award-winning West End musical Sunny Afternoon and creating the Netflix original series Mindhunter. Early life Penhall was born in London, and raised in Melbourne, Australia. Career Penhall's first major play, Some Voices, premiered at the Royal Court Theatre's upstairs playing space in London in 1994. It was very well-received, winning the John Whiting Award, and has since been played off-Broadway twice. In 2000 Penhall adapted the play for a film with the same name directed by Simon Cellan Jones, starring Daniel Craig and Kelly Macdonald, which premiered at the Cannes Directors' Fortnight. Penhall returned to the Royal Court Theatre with his second full-length play Pale Horse, which also played in the Theatre Upstairs and featured Ray Winstone, who had starred in Some Voices. A dark play, Pale Horse tells the story of a bar keeper coming to terms with the sudden death of his wife. Penhall adapted Ian McEwan's novel Enduring Love in 2004 to film starring Rhys Ifans and Daniel Craig. That same year he also wrote the screenplay for BBC2's BAFTA-nominated dramatisation of Jake Arnott's novel The Long Firm (1999), starring Mark Strong.