First-time writers Sean Wathen and Josh Dobkin have sold production company Stone Village their script The Field, a high-concept Cube-like thriller.
We say ‘Cube-like’, but in reality, we’re tempted to use the dread word ‘reimagining’, for the premise, in which a group of strangers wake up in a hellish prison and must work together to escape, sounds a hell of a lot like Vincenzo Natali’s 1997 cult classic. Except, where Cube took place in, well, a cube, The Field will take place in… oh, take a wild guess.
Of course, the field in which the movie’s characters find themselves isn’t just any field. This is an apparently endless field from which there’s no escape – luckily, the group has been given a number of seemingly random objects which may, just may, aid their escape.
So, it’s Cube meets Saw meets **Paycheck **(but not, as far as we can tell, Jim Sheridan's The Field). Nothing wrong with that, of course, as long as the final film is more than just a series of homages and ploughs its own furrow.
But we’re inclined to go easy on Wathen and Dobkin, purely because they work on two of Empire’s favourite TV shows – Wathen is a production secretary on House, and Dobkin is the art department co-ordinator on the recently returned Scrubs. We’re not sure how either job reflects on their abilities as writers, but we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. For now.
Stone Village is producing and stumping up the cash, with Benderspink on board as executive producers. No director is yet attached, although the guy who refills the coffee machine on Lost is very interested. Snap!