Peter Barsocchini

About Me

Peter Barsocchini is best known as the writer behind Disney's billion dollar High School Musical franchise. High School Musical and High School Musical 2 have been watched worldwide by more than 400 million unique viewers. The debut of High School Musical 2 in August of 2007 remains the most watched original scripted cable program in the history of television, with more than 18 million viewers. And the feature film High School Musical 3: Senior Year had the largest opening weekend of any musical in history, with a 42.5 million dollar opening, and final worldwide box office of over 260 million dollars. The franchise has spawned two stage plays that have toured the world, and an ice show that grossed more than 100 million dollars. The franchise has sold more than 25 million DVD's, spawned dozens of books, electronic games, and hundreds of merchandising items. Local language feature film versions of High School Musical have been produced in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina, and a Chinese version is due in 2010.

Barsocchini began his professional writing career while still attending high school in the San Francisco area, chronicling for newspapers the explosion of the American rock scene in the late sixties and early seventies. Upon graduating from the University of California, Santa Cruz, Barsocchini went on to win two Emmy awards as a television producer, before transitioning into screenwriting.

His first screenplay, the action/thriller Drop Zone, was produced by Paramount, the studio for which he also adapted Mission Impossible into a novel that was published in fourteen languages. He is the author of two other novels.

Currently, Barsocchini is writing a major musical for Dream Works Animation, collaborating with Tony Award winning composer and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda (In the Heights), also a coming-of-age story for Mandate Films to be directed by Debbie Allen, a film about the mods and rockers of the 1960's for HBO, as well as television pilots for Nickelodeon and Frementle (American Idol). He is consulting with Disney Channel on High School Musical 4, which presents a new cast and will return to television.

Mr. Barsocchini attended the University of California, Santa Cruz and currently lives with his family in Los Angeles and the Monterey Bay area.

Contacts (1)