Bryce Zabel is a writer, producer, author, journalist, and podcast host whose work has long explored the UFO/UAP mystery. He currently co-hosts the popular “Need to Know” podcast with historian Richard Dolan, his co-author on “A.D. After Disclosure,” a widely cited work in UFO literature examining what might happen after the government acknowledges the reality of non-human intelligence. He also co-hosts “Sound, Light & Frequency” with his “Dark Skies” co-creator Brent Friedman, a 36-episode iHeartPodcasts/Stellar Productions series investigating the hidden relationship between Hollywood, UFOs, government secrecy, and whether movies and television have helped prepare the public for contact.
As a screenwriter and producer, Zabel has created and produced five primetime television series, including NBC’s UFO thriller “Dark Skies” and the television adaptation of “The Crow.” He has written or produced for a dozen television staffs, including “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman” and “Steven Spielberg’s Taken,” and his produced feature credits include “Atlantis: The Lost Empire” and “Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.” His miniseries work includes “Blackbeard,”“The Poseidon Adventure,” and “Pandemic,” for which he and Jackie Zabel won the Writers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Long Form Original. His latest theatrical feature, “The Last Battle,” based on a New York Times bestseller, is scheduled to shoot this year in Europe with Endurance Media, and his scripted UAP podcast “Undeniable,” about a mid-air collision between a Tic Tac UFO and a commercial jet, is currently in production with Lionsgate Television.
Before his Hollywood career, Zabel was an on-air CNN correspondent and an award-winning investigative reporter in Los Angeles. He later became the first writer since Rod Serling to be elected Chairman and CEO of the Television Academy, taking office just days before the attacks of September 11, 2001, forced him to cancel the Emmy Awards twice in the same year. He has taught graduate-level screenwriting at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and is co-chair of the new Newport Beach TV Fest. His alternate-history novels have twice won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History: “Surrounded by Enemies,” which imagines a world in which President Kennedy survives Dallas, and “Once There Was a Way,” which imagines The Beatles staying together