Terry Rossio (born July 2, 1960) is an American screenwriter. He co-wrote the films Aladdin, Shrek, and all five of the Pirates of the Caribbean series. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Shrek, and won the Annie Award for Writing in a Feature Production, as well as the BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Shrek. He often collaborates with fellow screenwriter Ted Elliott.
Rossio was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan.[citation needed] After graduating from Saddleback High School in Santa Ana, California, he went on to study at California State University, Fullerton where he received his Bachelor of Arts in Communications, with an emphasis in radio, television and film. He is the founder of Wordplay, also known as Wordplayer.com, one of the premier screenwriting sites on the Internet.
Along with his writing partner Ted Elliott, Rossio has written some of the most successful American films of the past 30 years, including Aladdin, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and Shrek. He is the eleventh-most successful screenwriter of all time in terms of domestic box office receipts with totals at around $5.5 billion. In May 1993, Rossio and Elliott were hired by TriStar Pictures to write a screenplay for Godzilla, which featured Godzilla battling a shape-shifting alien in New York. Their script was dropped by Roland Emmerich in favor of a new script of his own co–written with Dean Devlin. However, Rossio and Elliott retained a "Story By" credit.

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