--- name: "Will Matthews" canonical: "https://film.one/person/will-matthews" fi1m_id: "will-matthews" imdb_id: "nm2176993" tmdb_id: 1235711 wikidata_id: "Q8002957" roles: ["Writer","Producer"] reviewed_on_fi1m: 3 average_fi1m_score: 68 average_as: "writer" average_over: 3 updated: "2026-09-30T20:46:09.496803+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." --- # Will Matthews ## Identity Will Matthews - **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/will-matthews - **Type:** Person - **Fi1m ID:** will-matthews - **IMDb ID:** nm2176993 - **TMDB ID:** 1235711 - **Wikidata ID:** Q8002957 - **Same entity:** https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8002957, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2176993/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1235711 Writer and producer. Born in Stati Uniti d'America. ## Details - **Work:** Writer, Producer - **Active:** 2019–present - **Frequently works with:** [Jeffrey Addiss](https://film.one/person/jeffrey-addiss.md) - **Average Fi1m score:** 68, as writer, over 3 titles - **Fi1m score by decade:** 2010s 76 (1), 2020s 64 (2) - **Fi1m against the critics:** 68 to 68 across 3 titles - **Score spread:** 0 at 80+, 2 at 60–79, 1 under 60 - **Genres:** Sci-Fi & Fantasy 2, Action 1, Action & Adventure 1, Adventure 1, Animation 1, Family 1 - **Screen time:** 2 hours of reviewed films - **Box office:** $21m across 1 films with figures - **Elsewhere:** https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8002957, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2176993/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1235711 ## Streaming the US now - **Netflix:** [*The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance*](https://film.one/tv/the-dark-crystal-age-of-resistance.md) (76), [*The Boroughs*](https://film.one/tv/the-boroughs.md) (73) - **HBO Max:** [*The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim*](https://film.one/film/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim.md) (55) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Will Matthews > Will Matthews writes, with Jeffrey Addiss, about people nobody would pick to save the world: Gelfling, a king's daughter, pensioners. It works when the heroes are allowed to be funny and frightened at once, and stalls when the script hands them speeches instead. In *The Boroughs* (2026) a retirement community is the front line, and the joke is never that the people holding it are old. Denis O'Hare, Clarke Peters and Geena Davis are allowed to be afraid of dying and of the thing in the dark at the same time, and Alfred Molina and Alfre Woodard carry the adventure without anyone being asked to totter for a laugh. Matthews has called it a coming-of-age story: “It’s still coming-of-age. It’s just a different age.” That is the whole of the pitch, and it is a good one. He came to writing from acting, and he and Jeffrey Addiss met at NYU and have been writing together for more than a decade. The partnership is the career. They made their name as co-creators and showrunners of *The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance* (2019), a prequel that had to please people who knew the original and people who did not, and the Gelfling were the first of their unlikely heroes. Then came *The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim* (2024), an animated prequel written with Arty Papageorgiou and Phoebe Gittins, and then *The Boroughs*, an original, with the Duffer Brothers producing. Two prequels and an original, all with monsters, all led by someone the story would not normally choose. The pattern in our reviews is plain. Where the writing gives the characters things to do, it holds. Where it gives them things to say about hope, it sags. Héra in *Rohirrim* rides, argues and climbs a cliff after an eagle, and Gaia Wise plays her as someone working out how to lead while doing it; we liked her. But the script keeps handing her speeches, and the narration keeps telling us what the pictures have already shown, and somewhere in the siege we stopped listening to the words and sat waiting for the next thing to move in the snow. Four names on one screenplay may explain some of that. It does not excuse it. *The Boroughs* is the better case for him, because the writers let fear of death sit next to the silliness and do not apologise for either. That is harder than it sounds; adventures with several tones tend to turn into a mishmash, and this one mostly does not, even when the monster mystery becomes a chore. The humour works because the programme does not think being seventy is the punchline, and the residents' duty to the people coming after them matters as much as their own survival. What we do not yet know is what Matthews sounds like without Addiss, or without somebody else's world to arrange. *The Boroughs* is the first real answer and it is a promising one. If the next thing is another prequel, we would ask for fewer speeches about hope and more cliffs. ## Biography Will Matthews is an American writer, producer and occasional actor. He is best known for his long collaboration with Jeffrey Addiss, with whom he created and served as showrunner on the Netflix series *The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance* (2019) and *The Boroughs* (2026). Matthews and Addiss also wrote the screenplay and story for the animated film *The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim* (2024) and the feature *Life in a Year* (2020). Matthews won a Primetime Emmy Award in 2020 for his work on *The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance*. An Amherst native, he has additional writing credits on short films and earlier television work. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com, gazettenet.com.* ## On Fi1m (3) - *The Boroughs* (2026), Fi1m 73, Creator, Writer, Executive Producer — [page](https://film.one/tv/the-boroughs.md) - *The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim* (2024), Fi1m 55, Story, Screenplay — [page](https://film.one/film/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim.md) - *The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance* (2019), Fi1m 76, Writer, Creator, Co-Executive Producer — [page](https://film.one/tv/the-dark-crystal-age-of-resistance.md) ## Complete filmography (8) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *The Boroughs* (2026), series, Executive Producer, Writer, Creator — Fi1m 73, [page](https://film.one/tv/the-boroughs.md) - *The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim* (2024), Screenplay, Story — Fi1m 55, [page](https://film.one/film/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim.md) - *Life in a Year* (2020), Writer - *The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance* (2019), series, Writer, Co-Executive Producer, Creator — Fi1m 76, [page](https://film.one/tv/the-dark-crystal-age-of-resistance.md) - *Needle in the Hay* (2011), as Lee - *T.U.F.F. Puppy* (2010), series, as Percival (voice) - *The Middle* (2009), series, as Mr. Seifried - *Rick & Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in All the World* (2007), series, as Rick Brocka Jr. (voice), Echinacea (voice), Timmy (voice), Echinacea / Timmy (voice), F. Cornelious Hampton-Hampton III (voice) --- © 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/will-matthews