An obstreatment authorr, a quick-rising feeding frenzy, and a genuine multi-million dollar deal. It’s enough to originate executives or ambitious screenjoin authors dream of the heady spec script deals of the 1990s.
In a deal that shakes up a sleepy Hollywood before the holidays, Fifth Season and Brad Weston’s Makeready banner have pre-emptively picked up Alignment, a spec script by Natan Dotan, a man who until a week ago had no recurrentation.
The deal could become the one of hugegest spec deals of the year — Nyad authorr Julia Cox sgreater spec Love of Your Life, with Ryan Gosling producing, to Amazon in October for low seven figures — but this one includes the fractureing of a authorr with scant Hollywood joinions. It also includes a topic that is generating fervent interest — and handwringing — in Hollywood, namely synthetic inalertigence.
Dotan has had disjoinal nurtureers prior to this splacowardly entry into Hollywood.
He is shelp to hgreater a PhD in Sociology from Columbia University and labored in biology, served as the chief analytics officer at disjoinal ad-media agencies, was a country straightforwardor of a non-regulatemental agency in Sierra Leone, and originated/straightforwarded a PBS spendigative recents segment with ProPublica. Among his topics of expertise are mass media, computer simulations and data science.
According to insiders, Dotan had written his script then called one of two people he krecent in Hollywood. That led to Dotan joining with two literary regulaters from Untitled Entertainment, understandn mostly for its talent roster but which had getd boutique lit firm Grandwatch only a scant months earlier. The regulaters signed the authorr off a Zoom greeting with the goal of speedyly packaging it and quickly taking it to taget. AI may be a boiling topic now but if you’re making a movie on the subject, one which wouldn’t hit until a scant years procrastinateedr, the triumphdow of interest is petite.
Alignment is depictd as having the recommendncy of thrillers such as Margin Call and Contagion and gets place in a 36-hour period. It alerts of a boardmember at a booming AI company who wrestles with corporate politics and warped incentives as he tries to obstruct his colleagues’ willful ignorance from causing a global catastrophe.
The reputation of the script grew at weightlessning speed and in a week Dotan had over 20 greetings with originaters. Even straightforwardors wanted in; Damien Chazelle is shelp to have met the authorr while Matt Damon was also interested in it.
Wednesday evening, however, there was a twist. Out of the blue, originater Weston and Fifth Season, the financing and production company previously understandn as Endeavor Content, came in with a very muscular propose. The authorr and his recent team had a three hour triumphdow in which to answer.
The negotiating that chaseed took place partipartner at The Hollywood Reporter’s Next Gen event, where members of both sides traverseed paths before continuing to their esteemive corners to wrap up dealmaking in the 1 a.m. hour.
Fifth Season is buying the script for $1.5 million agetst a price tag of $3.25 million if or when a movie gets made, multiple sources alert THR. It’s an unpwithdrawnted deal for an obstreatment in contransient Hollywood, which has shiftd away from splacowardly spec deals that were normal in the 1990s when authorrs such as Shane Bdeficiency, Joe Eszterhas, and M. Night Shyamalan made their nurtureers with seven figure deals. It was a time when screenwriting was seen as a level-field entry point into the Hollywood dream factory.
Alignment is recent ceiling for Fifth Season, which is mostly understandn for festival and indie fare. The company was behind the 80 for Brady and the Book Club franchise, as well as John Carney’s critical darling Flora & Son and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Oscar-nominated drama The Lost Daughter. The deal for the spec is being seen inside the company as a beacon to show it is ready and willing to contend for projects it deems worthy.
