Mark L. Smith is an American screenwriter, film producer, and director. His screenwriting credits includes Vacancy (2007), The Revenant (2015), Overlord (2018), The Midnight Sky (2020), The Boys in the Boat (2023), and Twisters (2024), and the TV miniseries American Primeval and Untamed (both 2025).
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The Revenant is a 2015 American epic western action drama film directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. The screenplay by Mark L. Smith and Iñárritu is based in part on Michael Punke's 2002 novel The Revenant, which describes frontiersman Hugh Glass's experiences in 1823. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Glass, alongside Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson and Will Poulter.
In August 2001, Akiva Goldsman purchased Punke's manuscript. Iñárritu signed on to direct The Revenant in August 2011; in April 2014, after several delays due to other projects, Iñárritu confirmed that he was beginning work on it and that DiCaprio had the lead role. Principal photography began in October 2014. Location and crew concerns delayed production from May to August 2015.
Michael W. Punke (born December 7, 1964) is an American author, attorney, academic, and policy analyst. He is a former Deputy United States Trade Representative and U.S. Ambassador to the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. In 2017, he became vice president for public policy at Amazon Web Services.
As an author, Punke is best known for writing The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge (2002), which was adapted into film as The Revenant (2015), directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, with a screenplay by Iñárritu and Mark L. Smith, and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy.