By David Wharton | 8 years ago

David S. Goyer has managed to become one of the top power player when it comes to geek-friendly Hollywood properties. After making a name for himself on Dark City and the Blade movies, he worked on Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, and is continuing that trend with story credits on Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel and the upcoming Godzilla reboot. Of course, any resume that includes Jumper and both Ghost Rider movies is far from perfect, but his name will still ensure at least a curious glance. Now he’s lending his moniker to a new science fiction project, a dystopian thriller called Somacell.

Deadline describes Somacell as the story of “a female prison guard in the near future who discovers that the virtual reality process that rehabilitates convicts is not all it promises to be.” If you’re a regular GFR reader and the title sounds vaguely familiar, Somacell was included on the annual Black List of the best unproduced scripts in Hollywood. The script was written by Ashleigh Powell, and Somacell will be her first produced credit. Warners picked up the script for a whopping mid-six figures, proving it is still possible to break into Hollywood with original material…it’s still really, really hard, but definitely not impossible.

With nothing but the brief synopsis to go by, it’s hard to tell what to expect from Somacell, but any day an original science fiction screenplay sells is a day for celebration in our book. We’ll bring you more on Somacell as we learn it.