Actor, director, and screenwriter Dan O'Bannon has lost his battle with Crohn's Disease.

He collaborated with fellow USC student John Carpenter on their 45-minute film Dark Star, which they expanded into a 1974 feature film. He wrote the screenplay and was featured as Sgt. Pinback.

He was a computer animator on Star Wars, then after the Dune project left him homeless, he cowrote the script for Alien. Scripts for Blue Thunder, Lifeforce, and Invaders from Mars followed, as well as two segments of Heavy Metal.

He moved into the director's chair with Return of the Living Dead in 1985. Then he cowrote the script on Total Recall.

After directing and writing a couple more films, at the time of his death O’Bannon was working on a prequel to Alien to be released in 2011.