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Temple Mathews is an American screenwriter, author, and director best known for writing the Disney animated theatrical feature Return to Never Land (2002) and for a career spanning family animation, live-action film, and young adult fiction. He contributed scripts to Slimer! and The Real Ghostbusters during the show's original run in the late 1980s.
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Mathews grew up in the Pacific Northwest and earned a degree in filmmaking from the University of Washington.1 He subsequently moved to Los Angeles to attend the American Film Institute, where he wrote and produced short projects.1 Before transitioning fully into screenwriting he worked as a camera operator in television, a background that gave him practical production experience alongside his writing craft.1
Mathews's first completed screenplay was optioned by a production company, drawing enough attention that Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment developed one of his subsequent scripts in partnership with Universal.1 The relationship with a major studio led Disney to offer him a multi-year exclusive contract for animation features and direct-to-video productions.1
He has also served as Story Editor on 35 episodes of The Judge, a daytime courtroom drama, and on two seasons of Inside Out, an anthology series produced by Propaganda Films, demonstrating range beyond pure animation.2
During his Disney tenure Mathews wrote several titles in the studio's direct-to-video and occasional theatrical pipeline:
Beyond Disney, Mathews wrote the animated feature Aloha, Scooby-Doo! for Warner Bros. Animation and contributed to All I Want for Christmas Is You for Universal, a Mariah Carey holiday project.2 He also wrote Princess Marina for Brave New World Productions.
In live-action, his MGM feature Picture This! (2008, ABC Family) starred Ashley Tisdale and became the second-highest-rated TV film at the time of its premiere.15 He co-wrote and produced Off the Mark, a theatrically released feature, and later wrote, produced, and directed Holiday Breakup (2016), a romantic comedy starring his daughter Manon Mathews that was distributed by Gravitas Ventures and made available on Netflix, iTunes, and Amazon.67
Several of his original scripts were developed or optioned at major studios and networks, including projects at Warner Bros. Television, Paramount Pictures, Lorimar TV, and Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment.1
During the 2007-08 Writers Guild of America strike, Mathews turned to young adult fiction, creating the supernatural thriller The New Kid, featuring a teenage demon hunter named Will Hunter. The book was published by BenBella Books and expanded into a trilogy: The New Kid, The Rising, and The Sword of Armageddon.8
His young adult novel Bad Girl Gone was published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books for St. Martin's Griffin and was subsequently optioned by recording artist Iggy Azalea.910 He has also published fiction under the pen name William Payton.11
Mathews has remained connected to the University of Washington as an informal mentor to students pursuing professional screenwriting and publishing careers.7
Mathews wrote scripts for Slimer! and The Real Ghostbusters, the DiC Entertainment spin-off series that ran from 1988 to 1990 and expanded the original The Real Ghostbusters format with additional Slimer-focused segments.3 His confirmed episode credit includes:
His Ghostbusters work predates his Disney contract and represents his early professional television writing career, when he was among the many freelance writers contributing half-hour scripts to the DIC animation library.
Some content on this page was researched using the Ghostbusters Wiki on Fandom.
Reel Mama, "An Interview with Return to Neverland Screenwriter Temple Mathews," reelmama.com, accessed June 13, 2026, https://www.reelmama.com/an-interview-with-return-to-neverland-screenwriter-temple-mathews/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8
Macmillan Publishers, "Temple Mathews," us.macmillan.com, accessed June 13, 2026, https://us.macmillan.com/author/templemathews ↩ ↩2
"Temple Mathews," IMDb, accessed June 13, 2026, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0558721/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4
"Return to Never Land," Wikipedia, accessed June 13, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Never_Land ↩
"Picture This (2008 film)," Wikipedia, accessed June 13, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picture_This_(2008_film) ↩
Gravitas Ventures, "Holiday Breakup (2016)," gravitasventures.com, accessed June 13, 2026, https://gravitasventures.com/holiday-breakup-2016/ ↩
University of Washington Magazine, "Screenwriter Temple Mathews teams up with his daughter on feature film," magazine.washington.edu, accessed June 13, 2026, https://magazine.washington.edu/feature/screenwriter-temple-matthews/ ↩ ↩2
BenBella Books, "Temple Mathews," benbellabooks.com, accessed June 13, 2026, https://benbellabooks.com/authors/mathews-temple/ ↩
"Bad Girl Gone by Temple Mathews," Goodreads, first published August 8, 2017, accessed June 13, 2026, https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/31450580-bad-girl-gone ↩
Deadline, "Iggy Azalea Options 'Bad Girls Gone' Novel For Movie" (February 2017), accessed June 13, 2026, https://deadline.com/2017/02/iggy-azalea-bad-girls-gone-novel-movie-temple-mathews-1201905733/ ↩
Temple Mathews, official website, templemathews.com, accessed June 13, 2026, https://www.templemathews.com/ ↩
"Slimer! And the Real Ghostbusters: The Dirty Half-Dozen (TV Episode 1989)," IMDb, accessed June 13, 2026, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0929183/ ↩
