Ben Cahan

Ben Cahan was the creator and co-founder of Final Draft, the worldwide standard in screenwriting software for the motion picture and television industries from the mid 1990s through today. Serving as CEO and Head of Development from 1990 to 2002, Mr. Cahan built the company from a home-based startup into a dominant force in Hollywood and beyond, growing annual sales to over $5 million during his tenure.

He graduated from the University of Maryland in 1984 with a degree in Computer Science, worked a year-long stint as a programmer in missile technology for a US defense contractor, then branched out on his own to develop PC-based software for the movie industry after taking an Intro to Production course at the University of Southern California.

Times change, and changing times demand new tools

Final Draft was built for a different world. A screenplay lived on one computer, was printed on three-hole paper and travelled in an envelope, and a writer mostly worked alone and waited to hear back. Today a script is written in the cloud and rewritten with a partner in another city. Readers want a logline, a poster and coverage before they open the pages. A writer can put their work in front of a producer on social media in an afternoon, and artificial intelligence can read a screenplay in minutes and tell its writer what a studio reader would.

Ben realized that the next great tool for screenwriters could not simply be a better word processor. It had to help writers plan their stories, understand them, see them, share them with collaborators, and get them read — all in one place. Script 360 is that tool.