3 posts tagged codex

Michael K. Cravotta, writer of Codex, a project on the Amazon Studios Movie Development Slate, has signed with Mike Goldberg & Josh Adler at New Wave Entertainment for management/representation.

“Mike and Josh are great guys, and we hit it off immediately,” Cravotta said. “I’ve got a very visual storytelling style, one that doesn’t talk down to the reader, and they got that. More importantly, they know the marketplace and are just terrific at analyzing material. I couldn’t ask for a better team in my corner. I think we’re going to have a lot of fun working together.”

Cravotta connected with Goldberg & Adler via an Amazon Studios development exec. “I think it’s important that people know Amazon Studios isn’t just the book guys doing something different — Amazon has assembled a top development team culled from major players in the Hollywood community,” Cravotta said. “They know story and they know this business.”

Codex had won awards in the past, and Cravotta said there had been some Hollywood interest in the story, an action thriller about a race to unlock Biblical secrets. But he said nothing materialized, until: “I had heard about Amazon Studios and one day had some time. I uploaded the script which was already done, copied and pasted a logline that was already written, and copied and pasted a synopsis that, again, was already written. The whole process took me five minutes and really my goal was just to get some additional feedback. Less than two weeks later it was optioned. Reminds me of that line: It took me my whole life to become an overnight success.”

“I’m very excited to be working with Amazon,” Cravotta said. “Codex took me a year to research and it seems kind of appropriate since all the reference books that I purchased to do my research I bought through Amazon. (Nice to get some of my money back!)”

Amazon Studios today announced that it has added two projects to its Movie Development Slate: a romantic comedy about Romeo’s other girl and a thriller about a life-and-death race to decode Biblical secrets. Both receive $10,000 option extensions.

The projects are:

Romeo, Juliet, & Rosaline
by Koji Steven Sakai & Emily Brauer Rogers

Genre: Comedy

Premise: After arriving in Verona, Rosaline, Romeo’s original crush, sets out on a journey to find love and inadvertently becomes the driving force behind the classic love story of Romeo and Juliet.

The Amazon Studios Take: Romeo, Juliet & Rosaline is a funny, well written spin on one of history’s most well-known love stories. Though set in the traditional Shakespearean era, the script playfully jousts with a more contemporary tone and begs the question, just how star-crossed were Romeo and Juliet after all?

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