FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES Directors in Talks to Direct Sci-Fi Drama THE TRAVELER at Paramount

Filmmakers Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein (Final Destination Bloodlines) are in final talks to direct the sci-fi drama The Traveler for Paramount.

The pair are taking over the reins on the Skydance project from Lee Isaac Chung, who was the last director attached, before the Paramount-Skydance merger. Deadline reports that Chung exited due to conflicts with his work on the Ocean’s 11 prequel at Warner Bros.

While The Traveler‘s logline has been kept under wraps, the film is based on the forthcoming novel Traveler by Joseph Eckert. Sources described the project as an intimate family drama that exponentially develops into a vast science fiction odyssey.

The novel explores the life of Scott Treder, a 47-year-old biology technician who begins experiencing involuntary jumps through time, and there’s been interest in mounting a feature adaptation for some time.

An early version of the script, penned by Austin Everett, garnered significant industry attention a few years ago, making the Blood List, Hit List, and the Black List, with MGM looking to develop it back in 2019. Justin Rhodes (Terminator: Dark Fate) wrote the current draft.

In a recent conversation with Deadline, Lipovsky & Stein revealed that they’ve been passionately chasing The Traveler since the project was at MGM, when they were coming off pre-Bloodlines success with the indie Freaks.

“It’s very rare to read a script that you connect to so deeply. And honestly, I’ve been emailing our agents every six months for six years being like, ‘What’s the latest with that project?'” Lipovsky said. “So the second it became available, we were in there the next day pitching our hearts out to be on that film. Because it was the one that got away six years ago.”

Per Stein, the project’s “got everything we love in terms of an original sci-fi story that is very grounded, in terms of character, but has a very elevated theme of what it’s trying to say.”

This sounds like it has a lot of promise. Check back for updates as the project develops.