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UPFRONTS 2013: The Overachievers 
EXCLUSIVE: To anyone with an interest in those Enigma codebreakers who helped win WWII and the math geniuses whose work led to the creation of the earliest computers, then the name Alan Turing holds quite a lot of fascination. This British historical figure most prominent from 1940 through 1955 is also the subject of a big spec script sale today. First-time screenwriter Graham Moore’s The Imitation Game was snapped up by Warner Bros in a 7-figure deal. I’ve learned that the studio outbid half a dozen indie companies because Leonardo DiCaprio ”has the inside track” to play the lead and was chasing the project. But so far no talent is attached. I hear Ron Howard is interested in directing.
First-time producers Nora Grossman and Ido Ostrowsky owned the rights to Andrew Hodges’ definitive biography Alan Turing: The Enigma and worked with Moore for more than a year to get the script just right. Moore is also a first-time novelist and his crime fiction debut The Sherlockian, filled with Conan Doyle lore, received a rave review in The New York Times by Janet Maslin. People I trust tell me The Imitation Game is the best script they’ve read in years — and they read a lot of scripts. The life story of this English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, computer scientist, criminally prosecuted homosexual, and tortured soul who committed suicide by eating a cyanide-laced apple has it all. (Reportedly, Steve Jobs named his company “Apple” as a tribute to Turing.) “Think The King’s Speech without the huge uplifting ending,” a source tells me. I’m told that CAA agent J.P. Evans, Safran manager Tom Drumm, and Jackoway Tyerman lawyer Alan Wertheimer made today’s sale happen.
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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Leo is a book hog! This is one problem with original material not making it to the big screen. They buy up all these projects and just leave them laying dormant for years.
Your sources were right. It’s the best script I’ve read this year. Excellent piece.
It is a good script, but it’s an adapted script, which takes the wind out of my sails when I’m measuring it against a writer who stares at the blank page, and literally invents something.
Wow. What an ill-informed comment.
Adapted anything lately, there, Sparky? It can often be MORE difficult, MORE tedious and trying to adapt, especially if you have any integrity about the material you’re molding.
as someone who’s done several adaptations, as well as original material, i actually would say adaptation is harder. you have to convey the spirit of the book yet write a movie, two extremely different art forms.
the adapter has to disentangle all the things that don’t work, solve the problems, (often problems that the book writer has glossed over), yet stay true to the “heart” of the book, plus persuade producers, studio, and the director and star to accept them, not to mention the author or person who owns the rights who are usually in a different universe and clamor to keep everything.
a book can be great but has to be changed a great deal to make it into a successful movie. a good adapter often ends up fully inventing an enormous amount of the movie–new characters, new moments that work visually, new plot motors, new complications, entirely new third acts,etc. Sometimes only the title, the “big idea” or conceit, and the names of a few characters remains. Everything else is from whole cloth. A lot of books about something that really captures the imagination still have to be re-formed into movies.
Some of our great screenwriters have had some of their biggest successes with adaptations, and you can see the incredible talent and how much intense work they brought to the project. Akiva Goldsman, William Goldman (All the President’s Men? He managed to make it exciting–a very dry book where we know the ending? Incredible), Scott Frank (Minority Report was originally a Philip K. Dick short story), my point being that the book may have been interesting or about something interesting but it is the screenwriter, sweating over the keyboard, who makes it work as a movie.
This guy was really smart. He chose a book with a fascinating topic, the enigma machine, what it meant, how it was developed, and the difference it made in the fate of the world by being able finally to crack German code. Fantastic topic, intrigue, war, jeopardy, plus a really moving emotional story. And knocked it out of the park enough to attract a giant movie star. Very, very impressive. Kudos and congratulations to him for his smart choice, extremely hard work on faith, betting on his talent, and writing a great screenplay.
I like Nora, she’s always been nice to me. Great hustle, good for her. I wouldn’t want to be on her bad side. Anyone west of La Brea knows she’s “the Godmother of the YHGM” (Young Hollywood Gay Mafia). Too bad I’m not gay, I’d do anything to get in with them.
There’s something missing here: SPOILER ALERT!!!!
Is the script brave enough to show the torture he was forced to endure to “cure” his homosexuality (after he was an essential member of the team that helped save us all from Nazi Germany)?
Yes. Script deals with his homosexuality and the tortured life he led. Its a fucking brilliant script. Congrats Graham. The guy is as smart as a whip.
And yes, Appian Waysers are book whores.
But how will we know whether that is really Leonardo Di Caprio up on the big screen, and not just a CGI simulacrum?
It’s a British period piece about a gay genius who dies tragically, sounds like Leo smells an Oscar nomination. As for Turing, he deserves every kind word, every bit of exposure and he is as relevant today as he was sixty years ago. In AI we still have the Turing Test, which is how we determine when a computer becomes self-aware.
LOVED this script! This is by far the best home for this piece of material.
Where can i read a copy of this script?
Hooray for the first timers!
Awesome! I can’t wait to see The King’s Speech without the ending. Let’ just see him stutter for the rest of his life. Sound like a huge crowd pleasing movie.
Sounds amazing.
When exactly did we enter the Leo-can-play-anything universe?
An excellent question Dee. I think the answer lies someplace between being nominated for an Oscar at 19 and becoming the biggest star in the world at 23. Or maybe it was more recently when he was nominated for Globes and Sags in the same year for Departed and Blood Diamond. Or maybe it was last year when he made 70 million dollars. Perhaps we’ll never know. But super glad you asked.
*High fives Marty*
Marty LOVES Leonardo DiCaprio.
I actually agree with dee123. Leo has been boring the last 10 years. He plays the same archetype character in every damn movie. At this point, he’s basically becoming typecast. Personally, I think he’s extremely overrated with the whole pent-up intense thing.
GEE, Marty, maybe Leo will find it within his awesomeness to fit this in between playing J. Edgar Hoover and Frank Sinatra?
NO, that is not the opening of a Saturday Night Live skit— but your slurping of Saint Leo certainly qualifies!
Marty,
Absolutely NOTHING that you said answers dee123′s question. In fact, your list is so inane it makes me wonder if you understood her question. He mad 70 million dollars last year? So, what, that means he’s a great actor? He got nominated for a Golden Globe? So did Pia Zadora? He gave a good performance when he was 19? He’s 35 now and his performances have a sameness to them that is starting to reveal his limitations as an actor. He was the biggest star in the world (among women and girls who swooned over Titanic)? I guess that means Robert Pattinson and Daniel Radcliffe can do any role now.
Your smug sarcasm, Marty, was entirely unearned.
Comparing Rpatz and Dan Radcliffe to Leo? You are an f-ing idiot. Seriously. You shouldn’t be allowed back on this site. How’s that for smug?
“How’s that for smug.” No, that’s not smug that’s just childish and ignorant, like your opinion. And saying that I “shouldn’t be allowed back on this site” is pathetic even for someone like you. Grow up. Seriously.
Actually i’m a he, but thanks for making me realise a few people around here actually have brains. I was pretty sure i wrote my comment in English.
Sounds great. Frankly, I wish I were involved.
Wow. Huge spec script deal. Hopefully this opens some doors. Would like to know more about this Graham Moore and how he was able to get his quality script noticed in such a big way.
He was able to get his script noticed because Nora and Ido hustled and believed enough in Graham as a writer to spend years developing a project with him that most people told them would be a waste of time because of its subject matter.
Nora, Ido and Graham are friends. It’s not like they had a lot of foresight in this matter. They optioned an interesting book and asked their friend to write it, that’s it.
Moore is a 29-year-old novelist, a Columbia grad and son of a politician. His mother sits on Michelle Obama’s staff and it doesn’t take but a pea-brain to figure out that he’s from a well-to-do family. I agree, the script is great, but it’s more of the same: novelist-turned-screenwriter with elite white people problems. Boo-hoo.
He’s also the author of a NY Times Bestselling book, so it’s not as if he came out of nowhere.
Also Moore and his writing partner Ben Epstein have numerous yet as unsold screenplays (which are all really great). It’s not like he hasn’t written a movie before, just not sold one on this large a scale.
Tom Drumm is the writer’s manager. Tom is with The Safran Company
The story behind the name of Apple is well documented, including an early logo featuring Isaac Newton, reverse rainbows, and worries about Beatle lawsuits.
I have never come across a mention of a ‘Turing’ inspiration and find that statement extremely dubious at best.
The company is named Apple after the falling apple that inspired Newton to figure out gravity. The apple logo, an apple with a bite out of it, is a tribute to Turing.
The Turing inspiration thing has been around in IT for years, as, though, has the story of Jobs’ rebuttal. It’s not usually about the company name though, more about the logo, which features a bite out of it supposedly in reference to the method of suicide chosen by Turing. (poison-laced apple)
In a 2009 interview with CreativeBits, Rob Janoff, the man who drew the logo, reflected on the theories about his work. He dismisses Sir Isaac or the Bible as source material and, while he says he is charmed by the links with the Turing story, he says he was unaware of them at the time.
“I’m afraid it didn’t have a thing to do with it,” he said. “It’s a wonderful urban legend.”
Janoff says that he received no specific brief from Steve Jobs, and although he’s hazy about how he settled on the simple outline of an apple, the reason for the bite is crystal clear: it’s there for scale, he says, so that a small Apple logo still looks like an apple and not a cherry.
Does Hollywood realize that there are other actors out there besides DiCaprio? Just sayin’…
Lots of actors, but Leo’s the best, so why the question? Eventually he’ll have to pass the baton to someone like Ryan Gosling, but right now, there aren’t many actors in his league.
Read the article Zach, he was able to get the script noticed because Dicaprio and Ron Howard circling it. That would get my grocery list noticed
There was plenty of interest before they stepped into play. This is a case where for once someone talented in Hollywood got noticed for the right reasons!
Tom Drumm is the unsung hero of this project. Kudos to him!
Not sure how commercial the material is, but the script was indeed an excellent read.
The script is excellent. There’s a ton of buzz around not just Graham Moore but the producers, Nora Grossman and Ido Ostrowsky. Apparently, all three are very young and very sharp. I would love to see this movie made – let’s hope it makes it through the development phase.
Can DiCaprio do a posh English accent?
It couldn’t possibly be any worse than his half-assed Rhodesian accent in Blood Diamonds. I’m still stunned about his Oscar nomination for that mess…
Acting is not how well you do an accent, but how well you visually portray (or hide) feelings and emotions. Sure, if his accent was perfect, it would have been great, but I think the nominations were for his portrayal of the characters, not for how accurately he imitated an accent.
Jesse Eisenberg sounded nothing like Mark Zuckerberg, yet he did an excellent job in the role.
Leonardo DiCaprio again? The only thing missing is Scorsese as director.
Congratulations to Graham Moore, who can now freely use the term ‘Living The Dream’ in reference to his own life…well done, and congrats once again.
Sounds like they think they’re onto to the next “A Beautiful Mind”,
$ 313 million worldwide (not to mention the Oscars). All the power to them, ’cause in fact, it sounds more interesting than the Crowe film. Do have some reserves re Leonardo’s potential English accent though too, posh or not. (Was Turing posh?)
If it’s like “A Beautiful Mind” the movie will leave out the part where he’s gay.