AI Thriller Spec Script Snapped Up In $3 Million Sale to Fifth Season, Makeready (Exclusive)

An unknown writer, a fast-rising feeding frenzy, and a true multimillion-dollar deal. It’s enough to make executives or aspiring screenplay authors dream of the heady spec script deals of the 1990s.

In a deal that shakes up a sleepy Hollywood before the holidays, Fifth Season and Brad Weston’s Makeready banner have preemptively picked up Alignment, a spec script by Natan Dotan, a man who until a week ago had no representation.

The deal could become the one of biggest spec deals of the year — Nyad writer Julia Cox sold spec Love of Your Life, with Ryan Gosling producing, to Amazon in October for low seven figures — but this one involves the breaking of a writer with few Hollywood connections. It also involves a topic that is generating intense interest — and hand-wringing — in Hollywood, namely artificial intelligence.

Dotan has had several careers prior to this splashy entry into Hollywood.

He is said to hold a Ph.D. 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.

According to insiders, Dotan had written his script then called one of two people he knew in Hollywood. That led to Dotan connecting with two literary managers from Untitled Entertainment, known mostly for its talent roster but which had acquired boutique lit firm Grandview only a few months earlier. The managers signed the writer off a Zoom meeting with the goal of quickly packaging the script and swiftly taking it to market. AI may be a hot topic now, but if you’re making a movie on the subject — one that wouldn’t hit until a few years later — the window of interest is small.

Alignment is described as having the urgency of thrillers such as Margin Call and Contagion and takes place in a 36-hour period. It tells of a board member at a booming AI company who wrestles with corporate politics and warped incentives as he tries to prevent his colleagues’ willful ignorance from causing a global catastrophe.

The reputation of the script grew at lightning speed, and in a week Dotan had over 20 meetings with producers. Even directors wanted in; Damien Chazelle is said to have met the writer, while Matt Damon was also interested in it.

Wednesday evening, however, there was a twist. Out of the blue, producer Weston and Fifth Season, the financing and production company previously known as Endeavor Content, came in with a very muscular offer. The writer and his new team had a three-hour window in which to reply.

The negotiating that followed took place partially at The Hollywood Reporter’s Next Gen event, where members of both sides crossed paths before continuing to their respective corners to wrap up dealmaking in the 1 a.m. hour.

Fifth Season is buying the script for $1.25 million against a price tag of $3 million if or when a movie gets made, multiple sources tell THR. It’s an unprecedented deal for an unknown in modern Hollywood, which has moved away from splashy spec deals that were common in the 1990s when writers such as Shane Black, Joe Eszterhas and M. Night Shyamalan made their careers with seven-figure deals. It was a time when screenwriting was seen as a level-field entry point into the Hollywood dream factory.

Alignment is new ceiling for Fifth Season, which is mostly known for festival and indie fare. The company was behind the 80 for Brady and the Book Club franchise, as well as John Carney’s critical darling Flora & Son and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Oscar-nominated drama The Lost Daughter. The deal for the spec is being seen inside the company as a beacon to show it is ready and willing to compete for projects it deems worthy.

In addition to Untitled, Dotan is repped by Gang Tyre.

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