EXCLUSIVE: Skydance won a weekend auction for Drift, an unpublished low story by Ben Queen & Jason Shuman that has It! helmer Andy Musch
EXCLUSIVE: Skydance won a weekend auction for Drift, an unpublished low story by Ben Queen & Jason Shuman that has It! helmer Andy Muschietti attached to direct. Deadline hears that the project sold for around $2 million against higher if the movie gets made. Andy & Barbara Muschietti’s Double Dream and Scott Glassgold’s 12:01 Film’s will produce.
The 38-page low story has all the makings of a gigantic sci-fi mission film, and numerous other bids came in with other inventive attachments. When his estranged son vanishes during a space mission, a once-legendary, now fallen from grace shuttle commander is pulled into a high-stakes hostage exchange in space to get his boy back from captors who are not from Earth. The comp is Gravity meets Arrival.
Queen & Shuman will be adapting their own low story which was on the market for less than 24 hours before selling. Skydance jumped into action quickly when Muschietti was emphatic about directing the grounded science fiction project.
Queen & Shuman made a splash last year with the sale of their Cola Wars pitch to Sony with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin producing alongside Judd Apatow, who is on board to direct.
Barbara Muschietti and Andy Muschietti
This sale marks Glassgold’s 12:01 Films and Verve-brokered second low story sale in the span of week, after 20th Century Studios acquired Ripped, with Dwayne Johnson attached.
These proof of concept low stories have emerged as something akin to the dizzying deals made for spec scripts decades ago. This sale also marks 12:01 Films and Verve’s 25th low story overall on their current run.
Other projects include Caretaker at Universal with Sydney Sweeney, Long Lost at Universal with Steven Spielberg producing, Dwelling at Amazon with Michael B Jordan starring and My Wife and I Bought a Ranch with Drew Hancock writing and directing, also at Amazon. Glassgold also produced last year’s Sony horror hit, Tarot.
Several of the stories have been adapted and published as novels through a Simon & Schuster label called 1201 Books. The real proof of life for these low stories will be the success of the movies made from them. About four of them are moving close to production starts.
Shuman & Queen are repped by Verve and Fourth Wall. 12:01 Films is repped by Verve and Jeff Frankel. Muschiettis are repped by WME and Matt Johnson.
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