Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless are American writers best known for writing films together. After box office successes like Dracula Untold (2014) and The Last Witch Hunter (2015), Sazama and Sharpless wrote Gods of Egypt (2016), Morbius (2022) and Madame Web (2024), all of which became box office bombs and received negative reception from critics. The duo also wrote a reboot of Lost in Space for Netflix, which contrary to their other work, has been well-received.
In January 2011, 20th Century Fox hired Sazama and Sharpless to adapt Atari's 1980s arcade game Missile Command.[2] In August 2011, Universal hired Sazama and Sharpless to write the script for a feature film based on the Hasbro board game Cluedo.[3] In September 2011, Chernin Entertainment bought an untitled pitch by Sazama and Sharpless, which was described as a futuristic Jungle Book.[4]
In June 2015, Walt Disney Pictures hired Sazama and Sharpless to write a live-action adaptation of the Night on Bald Mountain sequence from the 1940s animated film Fantasia, which they would also executive produce.[12] Though as of 2025, no further updates have been made.
Following the release of Madame Web, Sazama and Sharpless suddenly gained infamous attention due to their history of being "franchise killers". Philip Ellis of Men's Health referred to the duo's work as "middling genre fare that seeks not to expand or buck conventions, but rather to deliver trope after trope, revelling in cliché where other writers might shy away. In other words, the kind of movie you'll get a kick out of when you're slightly drunk and/or sleepy at 20,000 feet."[16] Sazama and Sharpless have been publicly mocked online with users questioning their ability to write and Hollywood's insistence on rehiring them for large budget projects.[17][18] While Alex Zalben of Comic Book Club agreed that the duo's work is subpar, he noted that their work on Lost in Space has been better received stating, "I don't know these guys. I don't have a dog in this race. But I'd venture a Netflix show they were actually in charge of is probably a better representation of their talent than multiple work-for-hire movies where they wrote an often intermediary version of a screenplay."[19]
Steve Baker, Ricky Blitt, Will Carlough, Tobias Carlson, Jacob Fleisher, Patrik Forsberg, Will Graham, James Gunn, Claes Kjellstrom, Jack Kukoda, Bob Odenkirk, Bill O'Malley, Matthew Alec Portenoy, Greg Pritikin, Rocky Russo, Olle Sarri, Elizabeth Wright Shapiro, Jeremy Sosenko, Jonathan van Tulleken, and Jonas Wittenmark (2013)
