René Echevarria is a Cuban-Americanscreenwriter and producer. He has worked on a number of television series, including , Dark Angel and Castle. He created The 4400 for USA Network, Carnival Row for Amazon, and was show runner on Terra Nova.
Early life
Born in St. Petersburg, Florida, René Echevarria attended St. Petersburg Catholic High School as a child. Echevarria graduated in 1984 from Duke University with a major in history. He has a Cuban-American background. Before attending university, he was expecting to follow his father into medicine. However, he joined a production of Cats at Duke and decided to go into the theatrical arts. After graduation, he travelled to New York in order to start work in theatre. He started work at the Circle Repertory Company, and became assistant director on a production of a play entitled Darts. He also took to appearing in plays, and appeared at productions at the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club and the Chelsea Theater Center. He travelled to the UK with a production of a play called Prepared, which was performed both at the World's End Theatre and at the Edinburgh Film Festival.
Screenwriter career
Echevarria's first screenwriting credit came after he submitted an unsolicited script to the science fiction series '. After re-writes by both Echevarria and the writing team on the show, this became the episode "The Offspring |The Offspring". He was hired to redraft "Transfigurations" and was subsequently hired as a writer on the series. During his time working on the series, he wrote over thirty episodes. Following this, he began writing for fellow Star Trek series, '. One of the episodes he co-wrote with Ronald D. Moore, "Trials and Tribble-ations", was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. Following Star Trek, he worked on a series of television shows including Now and Again, Castle, Dark Angel and Medium.
Producer career
He created The 4400 alongside Scott Peters for USA Network. He was reunited with one of his colleagues from Deep Space Nine, as Ira Steven Behr was one of the producers on the series. Echevarria was also involved in the development of the Teen Wolf television series for MTV, where he remained on the series as an executive producer. Echevarria was working as the show runner on ABC's television adaptation of the film True Lies, when he was asked to take over production duties on the pilot of Terra Nova. This followed the termination of four writers and another producer, amid a series of other issues with the production. The production cost $14 million, and suffered from a three-month delay, and Echevarria and fellow producer Brannon Braga both denied that there was a deliberate axing of staff, attributing it to the movement of the production to Australia. Echevarria subsequently signed a full-time deal with 20th Century Fox Television, the studio behind Terra Nova, as show runner for the television series, and was involved in the promotion of the show. In February 2013, he joined the team on television series Intelligence as executive producer and show runner. He left the series during the following July, in a split which was described as amicable. In July 2014, he signed a two-script deal with Legendary Television to develop new series from the back catalogue of the studio.
