Peter Chiarelli

Chiarelli is a native of the American Northwest who was fascinated by film from childhood and made his own stop-motion shorts as a kid. He had planned to study film at the University of Southern California, but a tuition scholarship from the University of Washington kept him close to home, and he earned a bachelor’s degree in communications and economics there in 1996; he later said the broad liberal arts education he received at the UW made him better at screenwriting, and that the skills of researching and synthesizing material still serve his writing.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1]

As an undergraduate he interned at KING-TV and Northwest Cable News, and after graduating he worked full-time at the latter as a news producer, writing copy for the anchors and taking care to make the scripted words sound natural, a skill he later applied to writing film dialogue.⁠[1][1]

He then entered graduate school at the University of Southern California on the producing track, attending classes at night while interning at DreamWorks during the day, and after earning his MFA he worked full-time at DreamWorks; he recalled that his first job there involved copying scripts and working as an assistant. He later served as director of development at MGM and worked as a film producer in Los Angeles for more than a decade on projects ranging from Amityville Horror to Eagle Eye; in those roles he often gave screenwriters script notes, which led him to decide to write a screenplay of his own.⁠[1][1][1][2][1][1][1]

He recalled that after Sony bought MGM his team was laid off, after which he moved back to DreamWorks to run Kurtzman/Orci Productions, the newly formed production company of screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci.⁠[2][2][1]

The Proposal was the second screenplay Chiarelli wrote; he considered the first one awful. He wrote it after hours while running Kurtzman/Orci Productions and, to keep colleagues from thinking he wanted to switch careers, submitted it under the female pseudonym “Jennifer Kirby”; the script sold to Disney as a spec screenplay, and he revealed his identity only when Disney asked whom to make the check out to.⁠[1][1][2][2][3]

The film, a romantic comedy released in 2009 and starring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds, grossed more than $314 million worldwide. He said he quit his producing job only when the film was about to be released, to write full-time.⁠[1][1][2]

As of early 2013, the success of The Proposal had brought him screenwriting opportunities including What Men Want, Most Wanted, Pete’s Dragon, and The Layover. Sharing his experience with students at his alma mater, he said Hollywood is a difficult industry and the only reason to do it is love.⁠[1][1][1]

Now You See Me 2 (2016) was directed by Jon M. ChuJon M. ChuJon M. Chu is an American film director and producer best known for directing the 2018 romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians and the musical films Wicked (2024) and Wicked: For Good (2025); the former was the first film in 25 years from a major Hollywood studio with an all-Asian cast, and for Wicked he won best director from the National Board of Review and at the Critics Choice Awards.Open the full entry from a script by Ed Solomon and Peter Chiarelli. Chiarelli said his idea was not to make the sequel a “bigger” version of the first film, but to put the magicians, who had controlled everything in the first film, into a situation where they were being played.⁠[4][2][2][2]

Before Jon M. Chu joined the project, Color Force producers Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson had already hired Chiarelli to adapt Kevin Kwan’s 2013 best-selling novel Crazy Rich Asians; after joining, Chu brought in television writer Adele Lim, and the two were not a writing team. Chiarelli recalled deciding to take on the film when he was 150 pages into the book, and pitching the producers a structure that differed from the novel; he likened his collaboration with Lim to “shared custody of a child,” with the two taking turns revising the script.⁠[5][6][6][2][2][2]

In October 2016, Warner Bros. acquired distribution rights to the film, which was being developed by Color Force and Ivanhoe Pictures with Chu directing, from a screenplay by Chiarelli and Lim, with an entirely Asian cast planned.⁠[7][7][7][7]

After Crazy Rich Asians opened in August 2018, Warner Bros. immediately began developing a sequel, announcing that Chu would return to direct along with the original creative team, including screenwriters Chiarelli and Lim. The film ultimately grossed $238.5 million worldwide. Chiarelli said the film proved that telling a story from a culture rarely seen on screen could also be entertaining and very profitable.⁠[8][6][2]

In September 2019, details of a pay gap on the sequel became public: Warner Bros.’ starting offers were $800,000 to $1 million for Chiarelli and $110,000-plus for Lim (according to sources; Lim did not disclose specific figures), and Warner said the quotes reflected industry-standard ranges based on experience. Lim walked away from the deal in the fall of 2018; Color Force spent about five months fielding other writers of Asian descent and in February came back to Lim with an offer closer to parity with Chiarelli; Chiarelli had volunteered to split his fee with her, but Lim still declined.⁠[5][5][5][5]

Lim said Chiarelli had been nothing but gracious, but that what she made should not depend on “the generosity of the white-guy writer”; she also said women and writers of color are often treated as “soy sauce,” hired only to sprinkle in cultural details. Work on the sequel continued with Chiarelli and Chu, who delivered the first draft of a 10-page treatment to the studio in late July 2019.⁠[5][5][5]

After about two and a half years of stalled development, Warner Bros. and Color Force hired newcomer Amy Wang in March 2022 to write the sequel, taking over from Chiarelli and Lim.⁠[6][6]

In February 2026, Sony Pictures was reported to be developing a new Charlie’s Angels film, produced by Drew Barrymore’s Flower Films, with a screenplay by Chiarelli.⁠[9][9]

In March 2026, Amazon MGM Studios won film rights to British author Kirsty Greenwood’s novel Romantic Hero in a competitive situation, with Jennifer Salke and Matt Milam producing through Sullivan Street Productions and Chiarelli adapting the screenplay. At that time he was also writing the new Charlie’s Angels film for Sony and had a co-story credit on the Sony Pictures Animation film GOAT.⁠[3][3][3][3]