After making his feature scripting debut with 1992's "The Cutting Edge," an agreeable figure skating riff on Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew" starring D.B. Sweeney and Moira Kelly, Tony Gilroy quickly established himself as a Hollywood screenwriter to watch. Though he received only scattered praise for delivering a hugely engrossing adaptation of Stephen King's "Dolores Claiborne" and penning the niftily plotted medical thriller "Extreme Measures," his major rewrite of "The Devil's Advocate," which transformed a difficult-to-pin-down project into a shamelessly entertaining box office hit, placed him on the town's A-list.

While Gilroy didn't have a singular voice like his top-paid peers Shane Black, Joe Eszterhas, and Daniel Waters, he was highly valued by filmmakers for his wit, sense of storytelling structure, and lack of preciousness. He wasn't above tinkering on Michael Bay's silly "Armageddon" or Antoine Fuqua's action-comedy "Bait," which was likely because a) the money...