Biography
Don Payne was an American writer and producer. He was born William Donald Payne on 5 May 1964 in Wilmington, North Carolina, and died on 26 March 2013 in Los Angeles.
Payne studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. He began his career writing for sitcoms including Hope and Gloria with collaborator John Frink. The pair joined the writing staff of The Simpsons in 1998; Payne wrote or co-wrote 16 episodes and served as a producer on over 100. He later wrote the screenplays for My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006) and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), and co-wrote Thor (2011) and Thor: The Dark World (2013). Payne shared four Primetime Emmy Awards for The Simpsons and received the Writers Guild of America Paul Selvin Award for the 2005 episode "Fraudcast News".
