Lee Hall is an acclaimed playwright and screenwriter whose work spans theatre, film, television and radio. He is best known for Billy Elliot and its stage musical adaptation, which won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. Network is adapted by Hall from the celebrated 1976 film by Paddy Chayefsky , one of the most influential American screenwriters of the 20th century. A three-time Academy Award winner, Chayefsky is renowned for his incisive, socially charged writing and his ability to expose the anxieties, ambitions and contradictions of American life. His screenplay for Network earned him the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and remains remarkably prescient in its examination of television, corporate power, media sensationalism and the commodification of outrage.