I have joined legendary game developers CD Projekt RED as a writer for the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077. Currently codenamed Project Orion.

The genre is foundational to me and since childhood, reading this fiction at way too young an age, it’s permanently changed how I see the world, I’ve wanted to be part of a project that embodies William Gibson’s maxim from his early short story Burning Chrome “The street finds its own uses for things” on every level. But there’s also the influence of JG Ballard, Samuel R Delany, Pat Cadigan, Bruce Sterling, Melissa Scott, Greg Bear and many other writers who expanded scif-fi from an outward colonial space opera to a genre that could express how technology was changing human innerspace (you can read my own short story PARK that’s an homage to all those influences and a bit of a fuck you to colonial sci-fi on this website).

Cyberpunk 2077 is one of my favorite games of all time. I found it’s use of first person perspective, embodiement, and digitized consciousness and identity to be at the forefront of narrative ambition for games. And Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is one of the greatest film or television adaptations of the subgenre I’d put up there with Blade Runner and The Matrix.

We are fortunate to have Mike Pondsmith’s remarkable alt-history sci-fi timeline as a foundation to create a future world that mirrors and expresses deep existential, socioecomic, cultural, political, parallels to our own lives. This is a dream job and I’m honored and extremely fortunate to be a part of it. We are aiming for the moon. Hope we hit the stars.

Panos and I teamed up again after MANDY to create episode 7 of Del Toro’s NETFLIX horror anthology CABINET OF CURIOSITIES.

Guillermo gave us his extraordinarily talented crew he’s been assembling in Canada for his films such as The Shape of Water and Nightmare Alley.

Our episode THE VIEWING starred Eric André, Sofia Boutella, Peter Weller, Steve Agee, Charlyne Yi, Michael Therriault and Saad Saddiqui.

Production Design was by the genius Tamara Deverell, Cinematography by Mike Ragen, Editing by Michele Conroy.

Music was by Onoeohtrixpointnever aka Daniel Lopatin with Randall Dunn

Trailer below.

I co-wrote the screenplay for MANDY with Panos Cosmatos from his story. It's the next feature film from the brilliant director of BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW. We filmed late summer 2017 in Belgium with Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough, Linus Roache, Bill Duke and an incredible cast, and it was produced by Elijah Wood's SPECTREVISION and Umedia and XYZ Films.

MANDY premiered at Sundance Film Festival and went on to the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes. Rotten Tomatoes said it was the best reviewed movie of this year's festival at 100% positive, and it made the best films at Sundance lists for Thrillist, Indiewire, and Entertainment Weekly. It went on to have an extraordinary theatrical release almost entirely by word of mouth.

As reported on Deadline.com: 

"Mandy is set in the primal wilderness of 1983 where Red Miller, a broken and haunted man hunts an unhinged religious sect who slaughtered the love of his life."

First images of MANDY and our incredible cast announced at The Hollywood Reporter.

MANDY at IMDB.

Outcast / 왕따 is a feature film about a Korean American who is forced to return to Korea for the first time in his life and leave behind the life he’s built for himself in the U.S. At first he ends up trying to survive in Seoul’s expat district Itaewon, but after falling into a self destructive spiral abandons it to help a Black language teacher from Queens, NYC on a mysterious road trip through the country’s history, music, tragedies and beauty.

It’s about exile, loneliness, and the bittersweet paradox of knowing you come from somewhere, can never entirely be a part of it and yet you belong there.

In late summer 2019 I was meeting with producers and scouting locations all across South Korea and did a great deal of the road trip in the script. Then the movie was put on hold due to our global crisis and the tragedy in Itaewon. I intend to return to it someday, with great love for Itaewon and respecting the grief and sorrow that will be present for years to come.

Concept art by Sloane Leong

I was asked to write a sci-fi short story for the S/S 2020 issue of DAZED magazine.

You can read the short story online here.

Or you can register to download the entire issue here. It’s on page 85.

One of most formative experiences of my life was reading OMNI magazine off supermaket wire racks. My first exposure to William Gibson and J.G. Ballard.

So it was a dream come true that during the crucible of 2020 I managed to get some short sci-fi fiction out there into the world, in a print magazine with a pop star on the cover, no less.

I’m the lead writer on a Thor project for Marvel Comics and Serialbox you can read about it here at Deadline Hollywood or at Wired here.

Season 1 is now live and you can listen or read the first two episodes here.

My incredible writing team is Jay Edidin, Brian Keene, and Yoon Ha Lee. Alex De Campi assembled us and is Editor. Between us we’ve got cosmic horror, space opera, colossal action, comedy, heavy metal, and the deep history of Marvel’s relationships.

We also introduced to the official Marvel Universe a Korean demi-goddess, Horangi, and a trans space pirate, Captain Zia.

I was a staff writer on Netflix’s upcoming series THE WITCHER: BLOOD ORIGIN and penned an episode. More info on that here.

“Set in an elven world 1,200 years before the world of The Witcher, the show will chart the origins of the very first Witcher, and the events that lead to the pivotal “conjunction of the spheres,” when the worlds of monsters, men, and elves merged to become one.”

Jodie Turner-Smith has been cast as our first lead, Eilé.

You can now read WORK NIGHTS for free online click here to download or view the PDF.

My first work in comics was published by Image Comics’ as the backpage story in THE NEW WORLD #1 by Ales Kot and Tradd and Heather Moore which you can buy a digital copy of here.

Artist is the incredible Sunando C who inked and colored himself. Lettering was by Clayton Cowles.

The first volume for Sloane Leong’s incredible comic a sci-fi saga about memory, language, colonization, diaspora, and rad psychic battles with alien speices, was rushed to reprint after selling out. I wrote a new afterword for the collection, a work I hold in the highest regard and an example of a truly new sci-fi vision and voice. Look for it here.

As covered in Pitchfork and i-D Vice.

On November 25, 2014 I was filming freelance for a Chinese film crew, so I happened to have my camera gear on me as I rode past Union Square.  News had just broke that the police officer who'd murdered Mike Brown in Ferguson would not be indicted. Eric Garner's murder by a police officer in Staten Island had happened only weeks before Brown's murder. 

I noticed something was about to happen, so I locked up my bike, started filming and after following the crowd over the Brooklyn Bridge to Flatbush, edited this that night. Dev Hynes aka Blood Orange generously gave some music he'd once performed at BAM nearby.

This film was an emotional reaction; more than anything I hoped that the people who gathered in NYC that night would be able to find themselves in it someday years from now.

On Christmas Day, 2017 I discovered that a principal subject of this documentary, Erica Garner-Snipes, went into a coma from an asthma attack. On New Year's Eve she had passed away. The section of the film featuring her was completed; accordingly I've changed the title of the film, I am now reworking her section slightly and adding a coda to her memory and I hope that it does everything I knew about her justice as a complicated, honest, funny, brave & devoted single mother.

A short excerpt featuring Eric Garner's daughter Erica, in her first ever protest, and a brief preview of this in progress feature documentary chronicling an unseen side of the beginning of the BlackLivesMatter movement and many of the women who became a part of it. 

This is a non-profit feature length documentary. Will be released for free and ad free online in early 2018 with possibility of some cinema screenings after then.

When Donald Trump instituted his Muslim ban I traveled to JFK airport to try and make a film about the volunteer lawyers & protesters who organized against him and his administration. I was threatened with arrest and had to run to the parking lot with my camera. Here's what I was able to sneak out. Covered on BoingBoing.Net

Music Video for The Decemberists song THIS IS WHY WE FIGHT from the album THE KING IS DEAD.

Cinematography by Mike Ragen.

Filmed in Texas.

Storyboards by Alex Ryu.

Filmed around the world in 2 weeks. 

Shawn Kim shot the band in 35mm anamorphic in Los Angeles.

Covered in American Cinematographer.

Winner of the audience award at Camerimage.

Winner of an MTV VMA for best editing. Nominated for best cinematography.

For the Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis illustrated novel WILDWOOD they were asked to make a book trailer. We came up with this instead, all the participants donating their time out of love for Colin and Carson's work. Riley Stearns was invaluable help on this project. Rob Ryang edited. Jenny Conlee did music.

Filmed in Portland.

Shot in San Diego. Tarin Anderson was cinematographer, Super 16mm again. Rob Ryang edited. I produced with Kyle Dettweiler.

Originally the idea was to shoot this on multiple continents, telling a story of separation between a couple that's broken up but still connected. Eventually that became I Will Possess Your Heart.

The second music video I ever directed, for the Grammy nominated Death Cab for Cutie DIRECTIONS project, which I was concurrently producing. A very personal project, the first thing I directed where I felt like I discovered my true point of view as a filmmaker.

Shot on Super 16mm by Tarin Anderson. Produced by Bernadette Spear. Edited by Robert Ryang. Voiceover by Olive Panter.

The beginning of my directing career, which I entirely owe to Colin Meloy.

He said there was a small amount of money for a music video.

Tarin Anderson shot it on super 16mm. Bernadette Spear did the wardrobe but essentially became the producer. Everyone in the video is friend or family of the band.

I briefly worked at Rockstar Games in the Production team, where a small team of us made their trailers using only the in-game engine. It was like being a documentary filmmaker inside a videogame.

Edited together as an emotional reaction on the day of the inauguration of the 45th (and possibly final) President of the U.S.A.

This is an excerpt from Julie Ng's documentary for the movie 127 Hours where we retraced the steps of hiker Aron Ralston to the exact spot where he was trapped and interviewed friends, family, and the search and rescue personnel who eventually found him after he'd amputated his own arm. Julie directed and I co-produced and was the cinematographer.