Caroline Thompson (born April 23, 1956) is an American novelist, screenwriter, film director, and producer. She wrote the screenplays for the Tim Burton-directed films Edward Scissorhands and Corpse Bride and the Burton-produced The Nightmare Before Christmas. She co-wrote the story for Edward Scissorhands and co-adapted a new stage version of the film with director and choreographer Matthew Bourne. Thompson also adapted the screenplay for the film version of Wicked Lovely, a bestselling fantasy series, in 2011, but the production was put into turnaround. She directed Black Beauty (1994); Buddy (1997), which she also wrote; and the television film Snow White: The Fairest of Them All (2001), also as producer and co-writer.
Thompson was born in Washington, D.C., the daughter of Bettie Marshall (née Warner), a teacher, and Thomas Carlton Thompson, Jr., a lawyer. She received her early education in Washington. She later moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to attend Radcliffe College, and eventually graduated from Amherst College in 1978 with a degree in English and classic literature.
Thompson moved to Los Angeles, supporting herself as a freelance book reviewer and writer. In 1983, she published a novel First Born which director Penelope Spheeris chose to adapt into a film, and from whom she started learning scriptwriting while writing the drafts of the film's screenplay. Though the movie was never made, the project inspired her to pursue a career as a screenwriter. Tim Burton was impressed with the novel, which was "about a monster fetus ". He felt First Born had the same psychological elements he wanted to showcase in Edward Scissorhands, and hired her to write its screenplay as a spec script.

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