Kamran Pasha (Urdu: کامران پاشا; born on 3 April 1972) is an American screenwriter, director and novelist of Pakistani origin. He was a writer and producer on the NBC series Kings,^[1] after working as a producer on NBC's Bionic Woman.^[2] Previously, he was a co-producer and writer for Sleeper Cell, Showtime Network's terrorism drama.^[3] Sleeper Cell was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Miniseries in 2005^[4] and for an Emmy for Best Miniseries in 2006.^[5] Pasha has also written for The CW series Nikita, Reign and Roswell, New Mexico as well as the Disney XD animated show Tron: Uprising.^[2]

In 2011, Pasha was hired to rewrite a movie screenplay entitled "The Immaculate" for Sidney Kimmel Entertainment and producer Charles Segars. The film follows an agnostic government agent assigned to protect a 17-year-old boy who some people believe is the Messiah.^[6]

Pasha wrote his first video game for the hip hop artist 50 Cent in 2008. The game, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, is the sequel to the bestselling 50 Cent: Bulletproof and is distributed by Vivendi Games.^[7]

Early career

Pasha was born on 3 April 1972 in Karachi, Pakistan, and migrated to the United States at the age of three. He was raised in Brooklyn in the predominantly Hasidic Jewish neighborhood of Borough Park.^[8] He attended Stuyvesant High School in New York, graduating in 1989. He went on to Dartmouth College,^[9] where he majored in comparative religion^[8][10] and was an editor of the college newspaper, The Dartmouth.

After graduating, Pasha worked as a journalist for the Wall Street publisher Institutional Investor and the Knight Ridder financial newswire. During his tenure as a reporter, he interviewed international leaders such as the Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres, the Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, and the Peruvian president, Alberto Fujimori.^[8]

He left journalism in 1996 and attended Cornell Law School.^[11] He subsequently enrolled in the MBA program at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and graduated with a joint law/business degree in 2000.^[12]

Move into film industry

Pasha briefly worked as an attorney at the New York law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison before moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career in film making. He attended the MFA Producers Program at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television and graduated in 2003.^[13]

His first television writing job was as a staff writer on UPN's remake of the classic series The Twilight Zone.^[14]

In 2003, Pasha set up his first feature film project, a historical epic on the love story of the Taj Mahal, at Warner Brothers Pictures.^[15] He subsequently wrote a screen adaptation of the Japanese anime Kite in collaboration with the director Rob Cohen and the producer Anant Singh.^[16] He has also written screen adaptations of the Japanese horror film Ghost Actress by the director Hideo Nakata and adapted Deepak Chopra's novel, Soulmate.^[17]

Pasha spent two years as a writer and co-producer for Sleeper Cell. In 2007, he signed on as a producer of NBC's Bionic Woman.^[18]

Pasha wrote and directed the short film Miriam, which won the Gaia Award at the Moondance International Film Festival in August 2008.^[19] The award is given to those who "elucidate and improve the spiritual quality of all life on the planet, and contribute[...] to the betterment of the world spirit".^[20]

Personal life

In 2008, Pasha accompanied his mother on the hajj, the traditional Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca.^[1] Pasha blogs regularly for the Huffington Post.^[21]

Books

Pasha sold his first two novels to Simon & Schuster in 2007. The books are entitled Mother of the Believers, a historical epic that follows the birth of Islam from the eyes of the Islamic prophet Muhammad's wife Aisha, and Shadow of the Swords, a love story set amidst the showdown of Richard the Lionheart and Saladin during the Third Crusade.^[22]