John Logan is an American playwright, screenwriter, and TV and film producer best known for writing the screenplay for the movies Gladiator (2000), The Aviator (2004), and Hugo (2011). He has also produced the movies Bats (1999), The Time Machine (2002), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), and the TV show Penny Dreadful (2014 – '16). In 2017, he wrote the movie Alien: Covenant directed by Ridley Scott.