Phil Johnston

Phil Johnston is an American filmmaker and voice actor who began in regional television news before turning to animation. He was born in Minneapolis and grew up in Neenah, Wisconsin. After earning a journalism degree from the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1994, he spent nine years in local news, first as a weatherman in Rochester, Minnesota, then as a reporter for an ABC station in Omaha, Nebraska, and later at KARE in Minneapolis. He received an MFA in film from Columbia University in 2004. Johnston wrote the short Flightless Birds and sold the half-hour comedy Life is Super to ABC, and his screenplay for Cedar Rapids (2011) made the 2009 Black List. He is known for writing Zootopia (2016), Wreck-It Ralph (2012), and Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018), the last of which he directed with Rich Moore and which earned an Academy Award nomination.