---
name: "Jon Lucas"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/jon-lucas"
fi1m_id: "jon-lucas"
imdb_id: "nm0524190"
tmdb_id: 52114
wikidata_id: "Q3081957"
roles: ["Writer","Director"]
born: "29 October 1975"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 4
average_fi1m_score: 50
average_as: "writer"
average_over: 3
updated: "2026-10-23T04:08:50.313273+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Jon Lucas

## Identity

Jon Lucas

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/jon-lucas
- **Type:** Person
- **Fi1m ID:** jon-lucas
- **IMDb ID:** nm0524190
- **TMDB ID:** 52114
- **Wikidata ID:** Q3081957
- **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Lucas, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3081957, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0524190/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/52114

Writer and director. Born 29 October 1975 in Summit, New Jersey, USA.

## Details

- **Work:** Writer, Director
- **Born:** 29 October 1975, Summit, New Jersey, USA
- **Active:** 2009–present
- **Titles on Fi1m:** 4: 1 directing, 3 writing
- **Frequently works with:** [Scott Moore](https://film.one/person/scott-moore.md), [Bradley Cooper](https://film.one/person/bradley-cooper.md), [Daniel Goldberg](https://film.one/person/daniel-goldberg.md), [Ed Helms](https://film.one/person/ed-helms.md), [Justin Bartha](https://film.one/person/justin-bartha.md), [Todd Phillips](https://film.one/person/todd-phillips.md), [Zach Galifianakis](https://film.one/person/zach-galifianakis.md), [Craig Mazin](https://film.one/person/craig-mazin.md)
- **Average Fi1m score:** 50, as writer, over 3 titles
- **Fi1m score by decade:** 2000s 72 (1), 2010s 40 (2), 2020s 40 (1)
- **Fi1m against the critics:** 50 to 50 across 3 titles
- **Score spread:** 0 at 80+, 1 at 60–79, 2 under 60
- **Genres:** Comedy 3
- **Screen time:** 5 hours of reviewed films
- **Box office:** $1,418m across 3 films with figures
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Lucas, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3081957, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0524190/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/52114

## Streaming the US now

- **Apple TV:** [*The Hangover Part II*](https://film.one/film/the-hangover-part-ii.md) (44), [*The Hangover Part III*](https://film.one/film/the-hangover-part-iii.md) (35)
- **Hulu:** [*The Hangover*](https://film.one/film/the-hangover.md) (72)

For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country.

## Fi1m on Jon Lucas

> Jon Lucas, with Scott Moore, found one clean structural idea in *The Hangover* and has spent the years since building comedies around groups misbehaving. The shape still holds; the jokes and the people inside it have got thinner.

Three men wake up in a wrecked Las Vegas suite with a tiger, a chicken, a baby and no groom, and none of them can remember how any of it got there. That is the whole of *The Hangover* (2009), and it remains the best idea Jon Lucas and Scott Moore have had: cut the stag night out, show the morning, and turn the search into a detective story in which every clue points at something the heroes did themselves. It is a writer's structure, and Todd Phillips had the sense to leave it alone. The film is fast and frequently funny. It is also careless with its women and lazy about its one Chinese character, and those faults belong to the script as much as to anyone.

Lucas and Moore have written as a pair since the 1990s, when both were assistants to the screenwriter Daniel Petrie Jr. There were uncredited rewrites, then *Four Christmases* (2008) and *Ghosts of Girlfriends Past* (2009), then the breakthrough, and after it a long run of films about groups behaving badly: the college birthday of *21 & Over* (2013), the mothers of *Bad Moms* (2016) and *A Bad Moms Christmas* (2017), the friends of *Spa Weekend* (2026). From *21 & Over* onward they have directed their own scripts as well, and the films since have been less well received.

*The Hangover Part II* (2011) is a useful test, because Lucas and Moore are credited for the characters and nothing more, and the new script has those men do the same thing again while the malice goes up. What the first film had and the second lacks is looseness, room for Zach Galifianakis to wander off the page. Lucas said in 2009 that "what's interesting when we write is how little time we spend talking about jokes", and in *The Hangover* that was a virtue, because the plotting carried the comedy on its own. In the later films it reads more like an explanation.

*Spa Weekend* sends Leslie Mann, Michelle Buteau, Anna Faris and Isla Fisher on a spa break and gives them wellness culture to knock about. The jokes are predictable, the sentiment unconvincing, and the four of them are repeatedly handed a situation where a line should be. We were not offended by it; we were bored, and the reason is plain on screen, which is that the friends are comic types placed in rooms and left to wait. Danny Ruhlmann's photography and Philip White's score cannot earn an affection the writing has not established. Moore and Lucas needed to be harder on their own pages before asking anyone else to help.

Their best film was directed by somebody else. That is not an insult, but it is worth bearing in mind the next time a comedy arrives with their names on it twice.

## Biography

Jon Lucas is an American screenwriter and director. Born on 29 October 1975 in Summit, New Jersey, he graduated from Yale University. He frequently collaborates with Scott Moore on comedy films.

Their joint writing credits include *The Hangover* (2009), for which they received a BAFTA nomination for Best Original Screenplay, *The Change-Up* (2011), *21 & Over* (2013) and *Bad Moms* (2016). Lucas and Moore made their directorial debut with *21 & Over* and later directed *Bad Moms*, *A Bad Moms Christmas* (2017) and *Jexi* (2019). They wrote and directed the comedy *Spa Weekend* (2026).

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.*

## On Fi1m (4)

### Directed (1)

- *Spa Weekend* (2026), Fi1m 40, Executive Producer, Writer, Director — [page](https://film.one/film/spa-weekend.md)

### Wrote (3) — the average rests on these

- *The Hangover Part III* (2013), Fi1m 35, Writer — [page](https://film.one/film/the-hangover-part-iii.md)
- *The Hangover Part II* (2011), Fi1m 44, Writer — [page](https://film.one/film/the-hangover-part-ii.md)
- *The Hangover* (2009), Fi1m 72, Writer — [page](https://film.one/film/the-hangover.md)

## Complete filmography (18)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *Spa Weekend* (2026), Director, Writer, Executive Producer — Fi1m 40, [page](https://film.one/film/spa-weekend.md)
- *Jexi* (2019), Director, Writer
- *I Am Here* (2018), as Delfin (Young)
- *A Bad Moms Christmas* (2017), Director, Writer
- *Office Christmas Party* (2016), Writer
- *Bad Moms* (2016), Writer, Director
- *Mixology* (2014), series, Creator
- *The Hangover Part III* (2013), Writer — Fi1m 35, [page](https://film.one/film/the-hangover-part-iii.md)
- *21 & Over* (2013), Screenplay, Director, Executive Producer
- *Flypaper* (2011), Writer
- *The Change-Up* (2011), Writer
- *The Hangover Part II* (2011), Writer — Fi1m 44, [page](https://film.one/film/the-hangover-part-ii.md)
- *The Hangover* (2009), Writer — Fi1m 72, [page](https://film.one/film/the-hangover.md)
- *Ghosts of Girlfriends Past* (2009), Writer
- *Four Christmases* (2008), Screenplay
- *Full of It* (2007), Screenplay
- *Rebound* (2005), Screenplay
- *Bad Moms' Moms*, Writer, Director

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/jon-lucas