A new beginning

Well what can I say, I've been away from this blog for a long time having only just figured out how to set up an account on Blogger. Now it is so much easier! Anyway a lot has happened in the two and a bit years since my last blog entry, so I better fill you all in.

Progress with Blackout seemed to take a step backwards after my announcement that Jessica Hynes was coming on board. What was supposed to be the final draft in June 2009 proved to be problematic as I struggled to please Ipso Facto Films while still trying to hold on to the original concept I had for the film. In the end we over-developed having a far too complicated backstory with two main stories that nobody knew which to favour. The project was eventually shelved halfway through a new treatment back in September 2009.


Blackout was originally supposed to be a simple three character story and so I wanting to go back to writing a much simpler story. Using the original 1970 suspense thriller And Soon The Darkness as a template, I built a new mystery thriller called Missing set within the same world I had created for Blackout (the bleak remote wind swept Island of Sheppey). Things started to feel like they were moving forward again when Ipso Facto hired a top design company to work on a new poster and marketing pack but by now the recession was at its peak and we had little interest.


I wrote a second draft with Ipso but began to have difficulties with conflicting notes and ideas that made a third draft impossible. With the option ending in April 2010, Ipso kindly agreed to return the rights to me so that I could look for a new home for Missing. My producer Bex Hopkins also stood down as she is having a baby this Summer and naturally wanted to have some time off from work. Since then I have developed a new draft with the help of a brilliant script editor Ludo Smolski and I am hopeful that a new producer will identify with the project and finally push it forward into production.

As for Blackout, I am keen to go back and re-write the version set in the Ardennes in Belgium and re-launch it sometime in the future.