J. Mackye Gruber

J. Mackye Gruber is best known as the co-director and writer, along with his creative partner Eric Bress, of the dark science fiction movie "The Butterfly Effect," starring Ashton Kutcher as a man who can time travel and who attempts to correct his childhood trauma by fixing parts of his past. But, as anyone familiar with time travel movies knows, this is a scenario in which complications will no doubt arise. Gruber and Bress met in the mid-1990s when the former was still attending USC film school. The two budding filmmakers collaborated on the black comedy "Blunt," released in 1998, and the film toured the festival circuit, winning a prize at the New York International Independent Film Festival that same year. The pair then sold a script for a pilot to ABC, which would later become the teen science fiction show "Kyle XY," about a teenage boy who wakes up naked--sans belly button--in a Washington forest, and tries to find out how he got there and who he is. Gruber also co-wrote the screenplay for the inventively violent second installment in the "Final Destination" franchise, as well as the script for the 2004 thriller "Cellular," starring Kim Basinger.