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Frank Darabont is one of only six filmmakers with the unique distinction and honor of having his first two feature films receive nominations for the Best Picture Academy Award - 1994's The Shawshank Redemption (with a total of seven nominations) and 1999's The Green Mile (four nominations).

Darabont himself collected Oscar nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay for each film (both based on works by author Stephen King) as well as nominations for both from the Director's Guild of America. He won the Humanitas Prize, the PENWest Award, the Scriptor Award from the University of Southern California plus a Writers Guild nomination for his screenplay of The Shawshank Redemption. For The Green Mile, Darabont collected a Broadcast Film Critics prize for his screenplay adaptation as well as two People's Choice Awards -- Best Drama and Best Picture.

Darabont was born in France in 1959, the son of Hungarian refugees who had fled Budapest during the 1956 uprising. He emigrated to the U.S. as a child and after living in several locales around the country, he settled with his family in Los Angeles immediately prior to high school. After graduating from Hollywood High, he spent his early years in the film world as a production assistant and set decorator.

He first worked as a production aide on the 1981 fright film, Hell Night, at which time he met another aspiring filmmaker, Chuck Russell. Together, they established themselves as screenwriters with the scripts for A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and the 1988 remake of the classic 1950s horror film, The Blob. Darabont also shared screenplay credit on The Fly II, the sequel to David Cronenberg's 1986 classic.

He also wrote seven episodes of George Lucas' TV series, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, and two segments of HBO's popular anthology series, Tales from the Crypt, earning a Writer's Guild nomination for the episode entitled The Ventriloquist's Dummy. More recently, he executive produced the HBO thriller, Black Cat Run.

Darabont and his production company, Darkwoods Productions, continue their affiliation with Castle Rock Entertainment, having just completed the big screen thriller, The Salton Sea, written by Tony Gayton and directed by D.J. Caruso. Other projects in development include adaptations of the Ray Bradbury classic, Fahrenheit 451, Robert McCammon's Mine and Stephen King's The Mist.