After closing a lucrative deal with Netflix to the tune of $90 million for David Ayer’s Bright – where the script was said to be valued around $4 million – Chronicle scribe Max Landis has sparked a new bidding war over sci-fi script Deeper.
That’s according to The Hollywood Reporter, revealing that Guardians of the Galaxy and Burnt star Bradley Cooper is circling. Landis’ latest spec dates back to November, where the industrious scribe first unveiled Deeper as a claustrophobic deep-sea thriller. Kornel Mundruczo, the European helmer behind White God, is reportedly attached to direct.
In essence, the maritime drama centers on the story of a former astronaut (Cooper, we assume) who dives beneath the waves to explore a newly-discovered deep sea trench. Plunging deeper than even the Marianas Trench, the fissure opens up access to the deepest parts of the ocean, and all of the murky mysteries that reside there. Could Landis’ treatment be taking a leaf from James Cameron’s book with The Abyss? Or can we expect a more realistic approach to the writer’s latest pitch?
Couple Landis’ involvement with the possibility of Cooper and Mundruczo coming aboard and you have the beginning of a bona fide bidding war. According to THR, Paramount, Bold Films and Fox Searchlight are some of the early parties that have declared interest in Deeper, and we’ll update you if and when those negotiations progress any further.