Flint Dille is an American screenwriter, game designer and novelist. He is best known for his animated work on Transformers, G.I. Joe, An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, and his game-writing, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, and Dead to Rights, as well as a non-fiction book written with John Zuur Platten, The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design .
Personal background
Dille was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Robert Crabtree Dille and Virginia Nichols Dille. He attended Glenbrook South High School. In 1977, he graduated from U.C. Berkeley with a Bachelor's degree in Ancient History and Classical Rhetoric. He received a Master of Fine Arts in Professional Writing (Cinema) from the University of Southern California. He lives in Los Angeles, California.
Flint Dille is the grandson of John F. Dille, publisher of the original Buck Rogers comic strip, and is part of the Dille Family Trust, which owned the rights to the character.
Professional background
After grad school, Dille worked as a freelance script reader, production assistant, and assistant art director before getting his first writing job from Joe Ruby at Ruby-Spears as a Saturday Morning Development writer. This led to writing scripts for Mr. T., The Puppy, and RoboForce. Later, Dille went to work for Sunbow Productions and served in various capacities as Writer, Story Editor, Associate Producer, and Co-Producer on several shows, including The Transformers, G.I. Joe, Inhumanoids and Visionaries.
Dille was a story editor for the first season of G.I. Joe (1985). He also wrote the episodes "The Gamesmaster," "Eau De Cobra," and ""Skeletons in the Closet," and co-wrote the episodes "The Pit of Vipers," "The Wrong Stuff," "Grey Hairs and Growing Pains," and "G.I. Joe and the Golden Fleece."
Dille joined the production team of The Transformers as a supervising story editor in the show's second season (1985-1986) and also co-wrote the episode "Prime Target" with his G.I. Joe colleague Buzz Dixon. Dille worked on an extensive rewrite of Ron Friedman's screenplay for Transformers: The Movie (1986); although Friedman contractually received sole screenplay credit, Dille was credited onscreen as the film's story consultant. After the movie, Dille served as a story editor for the third season of The Transformers (1986-1987) and wrote the season's five-part opening story, "Five Faces of Darkness."
Dille returned to G.I. Joe after the series was taken over by DIC Entertainment, co-writing the episode "Injustice and the Cobra Way" for the show's first DIC season (1990-1991).
Dille worked briefly at CBS on the in-house production of Garbage Pail Kids, before working with Amblin Entertainment on several projects, including An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, Tiny Toons (as a movie), and We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story.
TSR and Dungeons & Dragons
Dille met Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, while Gygax was in Hollywood and they began collaborating on a number of projects, including the Sagard the Barbarian gamebook series (1985-1986), which was published by Pocket Books. Dille co-authored a script with Gygax for a Dungeons & Dragons film; however, the film was never made. Dille introduced his sister Lorraine Williams to Gygax at Gygax's request. TSR was having hard times financially, and she was suggested as both a potential investor and as a skilled manager, and she was brought in to TSR as Vice President and Administration. In 1989, TSR expanded its operations to the west coast to get adaptations of D&D back on television and into movies; Dille was put in charge of this new department, which was named TSR West. Dille was able to get the boardgame A Line in the Sand (1991) published the same day the US bombing started in the first Gulf War, as he could convince the company president to move quickly. The Buck Rogers roleplaying game XXVc was started TSR West, but Dille was unable to finish the game so it was sent back east.
For the rest of the 1980s, Dille focused on animation writing and game writing and design. At TSR, Dille worked on Dragonstrike, for which he wrote and directed the video portion. Dille also directed several interactive audio projects, including First Quest, Karameikos, Red Steel and Planescape. The TSR Audio Disc Terror T.R.A.X: Track of the Vampyre, was later adapted into a CD-ROM by Grolier, directed by Dille and programmed by Peter Marx and Evolutionary Publishing.
Dille co-wrote the Agent 13: The Midnight Avenger series of novels and graphic novels with David Marconi and also the Buck Rogers XXVC comic modules Rude Awakening.