EXCLUSIVE: Paramount Pictures has made a preemptive deal for Origin, a pitch by Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales director Joachim Rønning. Rønning will write the script with his brother, Andreas Rønning, and he will direct it. Pirates producer Jerry Bruckheimer will produce through his Paramount-based Jerry Bruckheimer Films banner. They are keeping specifics under wraps, but it’s a contemporary big-scale high concept science fiction premise with franchise potential.
This becomes the latest project Rønning will direct solo after previously teaming with Pirates and Kon-Tiki co-director Espen Sandberg. Rønning is separately attached to direct Methusaleh for Warner Bros, David Heyman and potentially Tom Cruise, and he’s also attached to direct Winter’s Knight, the Viking-mythology-tinged origin story of St. Nick and Christmas that Sony bought in a seven-figure deal for scribes Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton, with Marc Platt and Lawrence Grey producing.
UTA, Brillstein Entertainment Partners and attorney Warren Dern rep Rønning, and Paramount’s Elizabeth Raposo and Marc Evans made the deal for the studio.
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