Originally from Ohio, the Halloween-born Dougherty was interested in art and animation, as well as horror films, while growing up. Using rudimentary materials and technology, he made several short animated films, often utilizing crayons and 16mm film. In 1996, Dougherty created a four-minute animated short entitled, “Season’s Greetings,” about a Halloween night gone awry. Even after his eventual film success, he continued to dabble in darkly comic horror illustrations, especially on his website.
Dougherty attended New York University, graduating with a film degree. Not long thereafter, while living in NYC, he met his future screenwriting partner at a party. Harris was a student at Columbia, spending summers in Los Angeles. The two hit it off, agreeing to stay in touch. After both moved to L.A., they were surprised to discover they had both moved to the same neighborhood. Dougherty originally found work with an internet company, developing an aversion to the countless writers he encountered throughout the city. But when the dot.com went out of business, Dougherty found himself diving into writing anyway. On top of researching various screenwriting how-to volumes, he also tore apart his favorite horror films, reducing them to outline form just to see how they worked.
Thanks in part to his screenplay “Trick Or Treat,” Dougherty was offered the opportunity to pitch ideas for the third installment in the “Urban Legend” horror franchise. He invited Harris to collaborate with him. They landed the job, and the film, “Urban Legend III: Bloody Mary,” was eventually released straight to DVD in 2005.
With the newfound clout from the “Urban Legends” job, and having already met and hit it off with director Singer in New York, Dougherty and Harris next scored a dream screenwriting gig – re-writing the X-Men sequel, a story conceived by Singer, executive producer Tom DeSanto, screenwriter Zak Pen and original X-Men screenwriter David Hayter.
Following the success of the sequel – a film that many viewed as superior to its predecessor – Dougherty and Harris were already putting together ideas for the third X-Men installment. As they were following up on storylines they had just established, there was a sudden and drastic change of plans: Singer dropped out of the series, having been given the reigns to his dream project, a new Superman movie at Warner Bros. During a trip to Hawaii, Dougherty and Harris outlined a story idea with Singer, and they swiftly wrote up an outline for “Superman Returns.” The story, which told of Superman returning to Earth after a long absence, only to discover that Lois Lane has both a new love and a child, and that the world has found a way to live without him, got the green light from the studio. In anticipation of the film, Dougherty, Harris and Singer collaborated on a series of comic book tie-ins, published by DC Comics shortly before its release.
After such high profile success, the writing team had in their hopper, several projects at various stages of script development. These included: “Ender’s Game,” based on the popular science fiction novel by Orson Scott Card, about children of the future being unwittingly trained for interstellar combat; “Logan’s Run,” a remake of the cult 1976 sci-fi film where a society keeps its population growth under control by ordering anyone over the age of 30 to be executed; “Charlie Chan” and “I, Lucifer.” Dougherty and Harris were, not surprisingly, probable contenders for a likely “Superman” sequel.