Roberto Orci, Co-Creator of Fringe and Sleepy Hollow, Dead at 51
Hollywood screenwriter Roberto Orci, whose many credits included co-creating Fox's Fringe and Sleepy Hollow and CBS' Hawaii Five-0, has died at the age of 51, TVLine has confirmed. Orci died Tuesday at his Los Angeles home following a battle with kidney disease.
'He was a visionary storyteller with a boundless heart and a beautiful soul,' Orci's brother J.R. Orci said in a statement to our sister site Deadline. 'But beyond his creative talents, he was a compassionate friend who would put his life on hold to help a stranger and find room in his home for the most overlooked pup at the shelter.'
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A native of Mexico, Orci first cut his teeth in showbiz as a writer on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess before joining the writing staff of the ABC spy thriller Alias, rising to the rank of executive producer. Along with his frequent writing partner Alex Kurtzman, he helped pen a string of box office blockbusters, including 2007's Transformers and the 2009 Star Trek reboot.
Orci and Kurtzman teamed up with J.J. Abrams to create the Fox sci-fi series Fringe, which debuted in 2008 and ran for five seasons. In 2010, Orci and Kurtzman helped develop a reboot of the crime drama Hawaii Five-0 for CBS, which went on to enjoy a healthy 10-season run. Then in 2013, Orci and Kurtzman joined forces again to help pen Fox's supernatural series Sleepy Hollow, featuring a resurrected Ichabod Crane solving crimes in modern-day New York. Orci also served as an executive producer on a number of other TV series, like the CBS dramas Scorpion and Limitless.
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