Nick Bilton

Nick Bilton is a British-American journalist, author, and filmmaker. He is currently a special correspondent at Vanity Fair, author of several New York Times-bestselling books, and screenwriter.

Nick Bilton
Nick Bilton in 2014
Born	England
Nationality	British-American
Occupation(s)	Journalist, author and filmmaker
Employer	Vanity Fair
Notable work	Hatching Twitter (2013), American Kingpin (2017), Fake Famous (2021)

Life and career

Bilton was born in England, but later moved to the United States and attended Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.^[1]

Bilton worked at The New York Times from 2003 to 2016, as a design editor in the newsroom and a researcher in the research and development labs. Before he left, he was a technology columnist and the lead writer for the Bits blog.^[2]

In 2016, he left The New York Times to become a special correspondent for Vanity Fair,^[3] where he writes features and columns. He co-wrote the 2015-2019 Vanity Fair New Establishment List.^[4]

In 2025 it was announced that Bilton would write the screenplay for a new Martin Scorsese film, starring Dwayne Johnson, Leonardo DiCaprio and Emily Blunt, set to take stage in Hawaii.^[5] Bilton will also produce the film.^[6]

Fake Famous

In 2021, HBO released Fake Famous, a documentary film Bilton wrote, directed and produced about social media and influencer culture.^[7]

Twitter lawsuit

In 2016, Bilton fought, and won, a 1st Amendment lawsuit when he was deposed to testify in a class action lawsuit against Twitter, after an article he wrote in Vanity Fair, “Twitter Is Betting Everything on Jack Dorsey. Will It Work?”^[8] alleged that the company knowingly deceived investors in 2015 about its users’ daily and monthly engagement with the site.^[9]

Books

Bilton is the author of three books: I Live in the Future & Here's How It Works: Why Your World, Work, and Brain Are Being Creatively Disrupted (2010),^[10] Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal (2013),^[11] and American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road (2017).

Hatching Twitter told the story of the Twitter's early days and its four founders—Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, and Biz Stone—who are portrayed as "mediocrities, narcissists and mopers who seem to spend as much time on scheming, self-promotion and self-destruction as on anything else", according to Tim Wu's review in the Washington Post.^[12] The book was optioned by Lionsgate in 2013, yet as of 2023 no series has been produced.^[13]

American Kingpin, published in May 2017, tells the story of the Silk Road marketplace, its founder Ross Ulbricht (who went by "Dread Pirate Roberts"), and how U.S. law enforcement arrested him.^[14][15] In June 2017, The Hollywood Reporter reported that the Coen brothers and Steven Zaillian were adapting the book into a movie.^[16]

Filmography

Year	Title	Director	Writer	Producer
2024	Biggest Heist Ever[17][18]	No	No	Yes
2021	Fake Famous	Yes	Yes	Yes
2019	The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley	No	No	Yes