JZ Murdock is an award-winning filmmaker, screenwriter, author, playwright and veteran storyteller whose work spans horror, sci-fi, true crime, psychological thrillers, and surreal drama. His films have earned 80+ international festival awards, and his screenplays have won or placed in 25+ major competitions, both with multiple Best Director & Best Screenplay honors. He also has won several awards for his one act plays.
His multi-award-winning anti-war documentary Pvt. Ravel’s Bolero (2022) has received over 80 international awards, including Best Documentary, Best Experimental Short, and Jury Awards. His earlier shorts—The Rapping (2018) and "Gumdrop", a short horror (horror, 2020)—also won multiple awards and Official Selections.
Murdock’s true-crime biopic screenplay The Teenage Bodyguard, drawn from a 1974 story about a teen protecting a murder witness from the Tacoma mafia family, has earned more than 17 international screenplay awards and repeated industry praise. Coverage from The Black List and BlueCat screenplay contest described it saying:
“This should be pursued into production” and “Why isn’t this on screen already?”
Entertainment attorney Michael Donaldson called it “exactly the kind of story being gobbled up in the market right now.”
He is also the author of numerous horror and sci-fi works, including Death of Heaven (winner of the NYC Big Book Award for Horror), its foundational companion novella Andrew, and multiple published short stories found in his Anthology of Evil series.
Notable screenplays include the franchisable supernatural adventure Gray & Lover: The Hearth Tales Incident; the psychological thriller Ahriman; the noir-sci-fi hybrid EarVu; and the surreal drama short, Travels. His work often blends genre intensity with philosophical and psychological depth, informed by his degree in psychology from Western Washington University.
Before retiring into full-time creative work, Murdock spent years as a senior technical writer and IT administrator. He is the founder of LGN productions and continues to develop film, prose, and hybrid media projects.
