Catherine Smyth-McMullen is an award-winning writer for film and television, with a focus on genre. She has won the John Hinde Award for Science Fiction from the Australian Writers’ Guild, the Ustinov Award for Television Writing from the International Emmys, been nominated for two Australian Writers’ Guild awards (AWGIEs), and has been featured on the Black List, Hit List and Blood List for her original scripts.

Her debut feature THE OTHER LAMB premiered at TIFF 2019 as a Special Presentation, garnering rave reviews, and subsequently screening in competition at BFI London, San Sebastian, and acclaimed genre-festival Fantastic Fest.

Catherine was a writer on the first season of the television adaptation of the acclaimed comic THE SANDMAN (Netflix). She wrote the acclaimed anthology episode ‘Dream Of A Thousand Cats / Calliope’, which earned her an AWGIE nomination in 2023. Prior to that, she was a writer and consulting producer for US horror anthology series TWO SENTENCE HORROR STORIES (The CW/Netflix), writing the pilot episode ‘Gentleman’ and fan-favourite ‘Tutorial’. Recently, Catherine was a writer on the upcoming mystery horror series THE KILLINGS: PARRISH STATION (Stan/Helium), and she also co-wrote an episode of BLOOM S2 (Stan/Hulu).

In addition, Catherine wrote the VR adaption of Wentworth VR (Foxtel), which won the Screen Producers Australia “Best Interactive or Game Production” in 2018, and also wrote the original digital short Parked: The Carnival Of Secrets, funded by Screen Australia and YouTube, which currently has 4 million views.

Catherine has also worked as a writer, showrunner, and script editor in Australian and U.S. writers’ rooms, and has sold and set-up pilots with Netflix, NBC, Warner Bros., AMC, and eOne. She has worked extensively in rooms and development, and regularly does script editing and script producing work on screen-agency funded projects in early development.

Catherine is currently in development on multiple projects, including NEST, an original body horror feature based on her award-winning short story, and supported by Screen Australia. She is also a co-creator of TWISTED, based on the short stories of iconic Australian author Paul Jennings, and she is adapting a book series with producers Gale Anne Hurd and Phillip Kobylanski at Valhalla Motion Pictures (The Walking Dead).