Simon Kinberg's name has only been attached to a handful of screenplays, ranging from the delightful (Sherlock Holmes) to the awful (er, just about everything else). But his talent has shown up on rewrites of several other high-profile films, including Date Night and the upcoming Knight and Day, and that skill plus the Sherlock Holmes megahit are enough to graduate the guy to Very Big Deal Screenwriter.
Deadline Hollywood reports that Kinberg has signed a two-year first-look deal with 20th Century Fox. The idea is to allow him to stretch out as a producer-- he had a producing credit on Jumper, which he also wrote-- and keep him writing more projects for Fox, where he already has The Eight Wonder, The Hardy Men and the upcoming X-Men spinoff X-Men: First Class in development.
Kinberg told Deadline, "It's inspiring to see movies embracing writer/producers the way that TV does. My experience at Fox has always been inclusive, I've been on the sets of the movies and gotten to be involved in a producer-like role, a partner in the process of solving narrative and character problems day to day. This felt like a natural evolution."
