Screenwriter Hired for Sleeper Adaptation.

As Sean Phillips pointed out at his blog, Variety reports that a screenwriter has been hired by Warner Bros. to adapt Sean and Ed's Sleeper.

A brief search online doesn't reveal much about the screenwriter, Brad Ingelsby. The Variety article notes that he sold his first script earlier this year, and a little more info about Ingelsby can be found in an LA Times article about the resurgence of Hollywood's practice of buying original scripts for considerable sums of money. When the 27-year-old Ingelsby sold his first script, for a film called "The Low Dweller", for $650,000, he was apparently a complete unknown.

Relativity outbid several other suitors, including Warner Bros. and Sony, for Ingelsby's dark drama about an ex-con avenging his brother's death in 1986 Indiana. It certainly helped that the ubiquitous Leonardo DiCaprio and Ridley Scott were attached, but even disinterested readers say Ingelsby's screenplay merits a comparison to the tone and nature of the Coen brothers' Oscar-winning "No Country for Old Men" and praise for its lived-in regional dialogue.

Ingelsby, an American Film Institute graduate, has been living with his parents in the Philadelphia area and working at his father's insurance company while tapping the keyboard every night. He remembers that when he left AFI, where he began writing "Low Dweller," one professor said that any graduate actually making money as a screenwriter within the first six or seven years should consider himself lucky.

"It's an unnerving experience already," says Ingelsby, very aware of his good fortune. "I really never expected it to be like this. It's amazing. It's overwhelming."

I would prefer Ed Brubaker to write the script if the task won't be fielded by a seasoned pro, but the big names attached to both "The Low Dweller" and the Sleeper adaptation are encouraging, as are what little details can be gleamed about this earlier script.

And, the fact that a screenwriter is already being hired, might imply that the film will be made and released sooner rather than later.


Buy Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips comics from Amazon.com