Robert Mark Kamen is an American screenwriter who has been writing major motion pictures for over twenty-five years. He is best known as creator and co-creator of the Karate Kid and Transporter franchises, as well as the 2008 action thriller Taken.
Kamen is a frequent collaborator of French writer, director and producer Luc Besson—his co-creator on The Fifth Element, The Transporter, and Taken. The two first worked together on the Natalie Portman and Jean Reno thriller The Professional. After the success of Fifth Element, Besson invited Kamen to join him in his goal of creating a "mini-studio" in Europe, making "movies that would travel, international movies, you know, action movies."[1]
^Peter Hartlaub, "Robert Mark Kamen established his roots in Hollywood. But his heart is in the hills of Sonoma, where he tends to his vineyard," San Francisco Chronicle, March 11, 2004.
^Shira Gotshalk, "The Script Assassin," Writers Guild of America, February, 2009.
^Degen Pener, "Dealing with the Devil," Entertainment Weekly, April 11, 1997. (Co-star Brad Pitt told the magazine, "Kamen came in and with all of us basically wrote it"; Kamen explained, "I would write dialogue in the trailer and an hour later hear the actors saying the lines.")
