After a competitive bidding war, Fifth Season, the financing and production banner formerly known as Endeavor Content, and Brad Weston’s Makeready banner have acquired the spec script “Alignment” from new screenwriter Natan Dotan in a seven-figure deal.
Described as being in the vein of thrillers like “Margin Call” and “Contagion,” “Alignment” follows a cutting-edge tech company whose latest AI model begins manipulating global markets and stoking international conflict. A principled board member and an out-of-his-depth software engineer must race to convince their profit-obsessed colleagues to shut down their creation before it triggers a globally catastrophic event.
The deal is $1.25 million against $3 million, if the film ends up being made. Makeready will produce the movie.
This deal is unprecedented for an unknown writer in today’s Hollywood landscape dominated by projects tied to IP, where big-money spec sales are rare. This contrasts with the 1990s, when writers like Shane Black (“Lethal Weapon”), M. Night Shyamalan (“The Sixth Sense”) and Joe Eszterhas (“Basic Instinct”) could launch careers by selling scripts for millions.
Dotan has had an interesting career trajectory prior to this dramatic entrance into Hollywood.
According to The Hollywood Repotrer, which first reported the news, Dotan “is said to hold a PhD in sociology from Columbia University and worked in biology, served as the chief analytics officer at several ad-media agencies, was a country director of a non-governmental agency in Sierra Leone, and produced/directed a PBS investigative news segment with ProPublica. Among his topics of expertise are mass media, computer simulations and data science.”
Dotan is repped by Untitled and Gang Tyre.
Reps for Fifth Season did not respond TheWrap’s request for comment.
