Spielberg’s Amblin Circling “Extant,” the Hottest Script In Town

Movies
Posted by MrDisgusting on May 24, 2013 @ 12:19pm
Category: Movies / News

Is this the hottest project in town?

Says TheWrap, Mickey Fisher, an unknown and unsigned writer until recently, has film studios drooling over his script Extant for weeks… there’s just one twist: it’s not a film script.

Fisher wrote Extant as a TV pilot. It’s a one-hour sci-fi drama “about John and Molly Watts and their son, a human-like robot named Ethan. Molly, the space-traveling wife, is also pregnant with a baby that is part human and part alien. The family intrigue deepens in subsequent episodes.”

Multiple agencies sought to sign the writer after reading the script, and WME won out. WME and manager Brooklyn Weaver, who discovered Fisher, sent the script around to the studios who are hot to trot for a high-concept script mixing sci-fi and familial drama.

“Everyone is freaking out about it,” an agent at a rival firm said to TheWrap. “It’s A.I. as a TV series.”

Though just 56 pages, it introduces several plotlines and interconnected characters that would be difficult to resolve in a single film. The script is written in five acts and takes place on earth and in a space station.

Warner Bros. still made an offer to acquire the project and turn it into a movie, according to multiple individuals inside and outside the studio, but now the studio is talking with Fisher about acquiring a different pitch. The studio declined to comment.

WME and Weaver always harbored dreams of turning Extant into a TV series with Steven Spielberg producing. They are halfway there: Amblin TV, which produced “ER” and “The Americans,” is developing and packaging it. It remains unclear if Spielberg will take a credit, though his involvement would make it even more attractive to networks.