Dagen Merrill
Dagen Merrill a writer and director got his first professional film job at age 13 working pyrotechnics in the jungles of Western Samoa. He received his MFA from the University of Southern California’s Peter Stark Producing Program and is an Honorary Fellow of the American Film Institute (AFI).
Dagen was named a Coca-Cola Refreshing Filmmaker and his short film Accomplice placed him as a top four finalist in the Project Greenlight competition at Sundance Film Festival. At the 2006 Cannes Lions Festival he was included in the Saatchi & Saatchi New Director’s Showcase as one of twenty-five emerging directing talents worldwide.
In 2006 he completed shooting Beneath, a suspense-genre feature film for Paramount Classics and MTV Films that he directed and co-wrote with his writing partner Kevin Burke. They are both currently under contract with Kickstart Productions (Painkiller Jane, Wanted) adapting the comic book Necrotic.
Dagen wrote and directed Broken Hill, shot in the Australian outback. He has just completed post-production for an animation feature, Flying Heroes and is in post-production on Murder In The Dark, a murder mystery feature film shot in Italy in 2010.