Mike Fleming

BREAKING: Universal Pictures paid seven-figures for Black Box, a script by Safe House scribe David Guggenheim that attracted several serious bids including DreamWorks and Warner Bros, the latter of which I’d heard was bidding for Bradley Cooper. The studio has put back together some of its Safe House creative team, with Scott Stuber coming aboard to produce along with Madhouse Entertainment. The latter’s Adam Kolbrenner manages Guggenheim and worked on the deal with Paradigm’s David Boxerbaum.

This chase went on most of the day as the town shakes off the Toronto Film Festival and gets busy looking for the next batch of tent poles. This is the second big spec this week, after Sony paid $1 million for Epsilon for the Wernick & Reese script Epsilon. Black Box‘s logline is this:
When Air Force One crashes into the Atlantic ocean, the black box recording reveals the accident was a result of pilot and mechanical error. Some three years later, the journalist husband of one of the aides killed in the crash receives an anonymous recording of the real black box, which proves the plane was actually attacked. He is forced to go underground to unravel a larger conspiracy against the US, while simultaneously discovering his wife was leading a secret double life.