Nicholas Meyer

Director / Screenwriter / Author

Nicholas Meyer is an award-winning author, screenwriter and director. His body of creative work in publishing, film and television spans more than five decades.

Meyer’s sixth Sherlock Holmes novel, Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell, will be published at the end of August, 2024 by the Mysterious Press.

He’s the author of seven previous novels, including The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1974), a Doyle tale in which Sherlock Holmes met Sigmund Freud. The novel sold more than two million copies, stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for forty weeks, and won the British Gold Dagger award from the British Crime Writers’ Association. Two years later, Meyer received an Academy Award nomination for his screenplay of the eponymous film, which starred Nicol Williamson, Robert Duvall, Alan Arkin, Vanessa Redgrave and Laurence Olivier.

Meyer made his directing debut in 1979 with a film he wrote, Time After Time, starring Malcolm McDowell, Mary Steenburgen and David Warner. He went on to direct Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Other directing credits include Volunteers (Tom Hanks, 1986), The Deceivers (Pierce Brosnan, 1988), Company Business, (Gene Hackman, 1991), Star Trek VI, The Undiscovered Country (Christopher Plummer, 1992) and the HBO film, Vendetta (Christopher Walken, 1999). His screenplays include Sommersby (Richard Gere and Jodie Foster, 1993) and contributions to Fatal Attraction (1987) and Dreamworks’ Prince of Egypt (1998).

His other books include Target Practice, which was nominated for an Edgar Award, and four other Holmes novels, The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols (2019), The West End Horror (also New York Times bestseller, 1976), The Canary Trainer (1993) and The Return of the Pharaoh, (2022). His autobiographical novel, Confessions of a Homing Pigeon, was published in 1981. Meyer’s memoir, The View from the Bridge: Memories of Star Trek and a Life in Hollywood, was published in 2009. He is currently working on his seventh Sherlock Holmes novel.

Meyer directed ABC’s The Day After (1983), which remains the single most-watched television film ever made (100 million people in one night) and was nominated for fourteen Emmys. Additional work includes a two-part miniseries, Houdini (Adrien Brody, 2014) based on his father, Bernard C. Meyer’s biography. He is the co-creator of the Netflix series Medici—Masters of Florence, starring Dustin Hoffman, and worked on STAR TREK: Discovery for CBS Access.

Born and raised in New York City, Nicholas Meyer was graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in theatre and filmmaking. He lives in Santa Monica, California.