Childhood & Early Life
James ‘Jim’ Wong was born on April 20, 1959, in Hong Kong.
His family migrated to the United States and settled in San Diego, California, when he was 10 years old.
He completed his schooling from El Cajon Valley High School, where he met and befriended Glen Morgan, who became his writing partner later on.
He attended Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, and became a member of the comedy improvisational theatre group.
Although he enrolled in an engineering program, he later changed his major to film, after being inspired by ‘Apocalypse Now’.
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Career
After completing his graduation, he started working as an assistant to Sandy Howard, writing screenplays along with Morgan.
He began his writing career in 1985, when he produced the screenplay for ‘The Boys Next Door’, along with Morgan.
In 1988, he tried his hand as a story editor, with Morgan, for the crime drama ‘Knightwatch’, which aired for about three months on ABC network.
A year later in 1989, both Morgan and Wong took up various projects for Stephen J. Cannell Productions, beginning with ’21 Jump Street’ and ‘Booker’, where they served as story editors and staff writers.
Eventually, he went on to work on the fourth season of ‘Wiseguy’ and first two seasons of ‘The Commish’ as a supervising producer in 1990 and 1991 respectively, along with Morgan.
In 1991, the Wong-Morgan duo became creative and executive producers of ‘The 100 Lives of Black Jack Salvage’, a short-lived fantasy adventure TV-movie presented by Walt Disney Television.
The producer-writer pair got associated with Chris Carter as executive producers and staff writers on his science fiction horror drama television series, ‘The X-Files’, aired on FOX channel in 1993.
Along with Carter, he co-wrote the opening episode ‘Little Green Men’ of the second season of ‘The X-Files’. Further, he co-wrote his last episode, titled ‘Die Hand Die Verletzt’ in 1995.
He signed a four-year contract deal, amounting $8 million, with 20th Century Fox Television in 1995, where he worked on the sci-fi series ‘Space: Above and Beyond’, co-written, created and produced by Morgan.
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The duo returned to ‘The X-Files’ series in its fourth season, writing and producing two episodes – ‘Home’ and ‘The Field Where I Died’.
He ventured into television with Morgan’s ‘Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man’.
In 1997, he and Morgan were signed by Carter for his American TV series ‘Millennium’ as writers and producers, which aired on FOX network between 1997 and 1999.
Along with Morgan, he turned executive producer, for the 13-episode paranormal series ‘The Others’, featured on NBC in 2000.
He forayed into film directing in 2000 with ‘Final Destination’, which he co-scripted with Morgan, followed by the 2001 science fiction martial arts action movie ‘The One’, starring Jet Li, which he wrote, directed and produced.
He made a few documentary videos during his career, such as ‘The One’, ‘About Face’, ‘The Perfect Soufflé: Testing ‘Final Destination’ and ‘The Year of the Rat’.
He continued making horror films with his writing partner Morgan, such as ‘Willard’ (2003) and a third installment of the Final Destination franchise ‘Final Destination 3’ (2006).
In 2006, he produced ‘Black Christmas’, a remake of the 1974 film with the same name, which he co-wrote with Morgan, while the movie was single-handedly directed by Morgan.
He returned to film-direction with the 2009 adventure film ‘Dragonball Evolution’, based on the Japanese Dragon Ball manga franchise. He also wrote the script of the same.
