EXCLUSIVE: In a aggressive scenario, Lionsgate has landed Renegotiate, a high-concept action-thriller spec by Mark Townend, sources inform us.
The movie facilities on a troubled FBI disaster negotiator who finds himself caught in a time loop, re-living the occasions of a bombing and struggling to cease it earlier than time runs out. Suppose Supply Code meets Cellphone Sales space. Ric Roman Waugh and Brendon Boyea will produce for CineMachine, alongside Brian Kavanagh Jones and Fred Berger for Vary, with AJ Bourscheid government producing.
Townend’s deal is exceptional, we’re instructed, for a author with no produced credit, notably provided that the script was taken out with none expertise attachments. Sources described the result as a three-way bidding warfare that resulted in a mid-six-figure assured price towards a low-seven-figure buy/bonus. The script was taken out on the primary Monday of April, and by Friday of that week, 20 premium manufacturing corporations have been chasing aggressively. Finally, CineMachine and Vary partnered to take the challenge into Lionsgate, which took the script off the desk at a powerful supply, on a brief clock.
Scott O’Brien will oversee for Lionsgate. Dan Freedman negotiated the deal on behalf of the studio.
Repped by Paradigm, Bellevue Productions and legal professional Marios Rush, Townend is not any stranger to splashy offers, having bought a number of specs to main studios whereas touchdown on the Black Record a number of instances. Sugar23 is packaging his spec The Donor, together with his 2024 Black Record script Timeshare set to be produced by Vertigo and Leisure 360.
Townend’s unique spec Augmented bought to Warner Bros with LuckyChap and Denise Di Novi producing. The scribe arrange his spec Continuum at Byron Allen’s Leisure Studios with Elliott Lester directing and Barry Josephson producing, and his screenplay Black Iris is about up at Richard Saperstein’s Bluestone Leisure with Christopher MacBride directing and Studio 8 producing. Household Secrets and techniques, a characteristic he wrote for Ace Leisure, lately wrapped manufacturing. On the TV facet, he’s at the moment growing a sequence for South Korean tv with Certain Leisure, in addition to one other challenge with Sugar23.
Boyea and Waugh’s upcoming initiatives at CineMachine embrace Lionsgate’s Greenland: Migration — the sequel to 2020 Gerard Butler thriller Greenland — and an untitled Jason Statham thriller for Black Bear. Waugh is finest recognized for guiding the Greenland movies, in addition to titles like Shot Caller, Angel Has Fallen, Nationwide Champions and Kandahar.
Vary, in the meantime, is coming off of the discharge of Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey and A Full Unknown, James Mangold’s Oscar-nominated drama starring Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan. Upcoming, the corporate has Perkins’ newest Neon horror pic Keeper in addition to Harmful Animals, a horror thriller to be launched by IFC Movies following its premiere in Administrators’ Fortnight at Cannes.
