Saturday Night and Ghostbusters: Afterlife director Jason Reitman has a real-time thriller lined up – 71 Minutes, based on a spec script. Although previously better known for his indie comedy dramas, including Juno and Young Adult, director Jason Reitman took a step into the genre arena in 2021 with Ghostbusters: Afterlife – essentially continuing the ... Director Jason Reitman to make the real-time thriller, 71 Minutes
Saturday Night and Ghostbusters: Afterlife director Jason Reitman has a real-time thriller lined up – 71 Minutes, based on a spec script.
Although previously better known for his indie comedy dramas, including Juno and Young Adult, director Jason Reitman took a step into the genre arena in 2021 with Ghostbusters: Afterlife – essentially continuing the family business begun by his father, the late Ivan Reitman.
Two years on from his previous film, Saturday Night, Reitman is making another genre film – this time an original thriller called 71 Minutes. According to The Hollywood Reporter, it’ll be distributed by Sony Pictures and produced via Reitman’s company, Ghost Corp.
The script, by Ian Shorr, is said to take place in real time, with a protagonist needing to avoid capture for the 71 minutes remaining before the sun rises. Could it be a vampire film, greenlit in the wake of another original genre piece, Sinners? Plot specifics are being kept under wraps for now.
Shorr previously wrote the 2021 action thriller Infinite, starring Mark Wahlberg and Chiwetel Ejiofor, and is also behind the forthcoming sci-fi thriller Shiver, directed by Tim Miller and starring Keanu Reeves. The latter is due for release in 2027.
There’s a detail to this story that might encourage any budding screenwriters out there. 71 Minutes was written on spec, with Shorr’s script attracting interest from 20 production companies according to THR; after a bit of deal making, Sony eventually emerged victorious.
In a highly uncertain climate for screenwriters, it’s generally said that spec scripts don’t sell these days, and that it’s more likely for wordsmiths to break into the film and TV industry by getting assignments on major franchises – a polish on a superhero script here, a bit of writing on a hit show there.
It’s a far cry from the 80s and 90s, when spec scripts seemed to be sparking bidding wars all over the place, and new writers were being plucked out of universities (Greg Widen wrote Highlander while he was still a student in the first half of the 1980s).
With superhero films and franchises no longer the same sure-fire success they once were, and non-sequel films like Weapons and Sinners finding audiences and winning Oscars, perhaps the market for original scripts is beginning to pick up again. We can only hope.
We’ll bring you more on 71 Minutes as it comes in.
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