Top producers Denise Di Novi (Crazy, Stupid, Love; The Nightmare Before Christmas), Bill Gerber (Gran Torino; The Dukes of Hazzard) and Academy Award winner Edward Saxon (Adaptation; Silence of the Lambs) have signed on to three Amazon Studios projects.

“We’re delighted to be getting into business with top-flight producers like Billy, Denise and Ed,” said Amazon Studios Director Roy Price. “Their experience and story insight will be invaluable as Amazon Studios moves toward its first productions.”

Di Novi will produce Touching Blue, a Best Script award winner by Scott Mullen. The script is about a woman who can track people based on what they’ve touched — but who feels intense pain when someone touches her. She’s helping the FBI track a serial killer, and unraveling some secrets of her own. “I look forward to bringing the Touching Blue story to life and being a part of this new approach to developing films,” Di Novi said.

Gerber is attached to produce Original Soldiers, which is based on a short created by the Amazon Studios team. It’s the story of an old-school strike force that has to save the day when the humans’ droid defense force is disabled. “Original Soldiers is an exciting project, and I’m eager to see how it inspires writers,” Gerber said. Writers submitted more than 1,000 pitches for the story. Five will be selected in mid-January to submit a completed treatment and one will be chosen to write a full script. Selected writers will get feedback and advice from Gerber and the Amazon Studios Story Department. Learn more here.

Saxon is producing Children of Others, a Best Script Award winner by Barrington Smith-Seetachit. It’s the story of a woman who takes her last chance at a fertility clinic, only to find only to find that her unborn child may be the first wave of an alien invasion. “It’s thrilling to be partnered with Amazon Studios in nurturing a vivid new voice and a terrific story.  I’m very excited to be part of this bold new venture,” Saxon said. He already has met with Smith-Seetachit, who is moving forward with a new draft of her script.  “We talked about backstories of certain characters, and the universe and rules — and there were some notes about improving the flow and the build of the story, and adding in some bigger, better moments,” Smith-Seetachit wrote about the experience. “I’m actually looking forward to sitting down … and working with the material with an eye to solving specific problems.”

Amazon Studios launched in November 2010 and has attracted more than 6,000 scripts and more than 600 test movies from writers and filmmakers around the world. “We’re pleased to see such strong projects emerge through the Amazon Studios development process — and to move them forward,” Price said.

— Stephanie Reid-Simons