Phil Hawkins, a filmmaker who was a contestant on the Steven Spielberg-produced filmmaking competition reality show On the Lot, has been tapped to direct Great Scott. The film is a love-letter inspired by — and, to some degree, dependent upon — Robert Zemeckis‘ beloved 80’s time-travel comedy Back to the Future. [Moviehole, via /Film]
Scripted by newbie writers Alex Child and Hiram Bleetman, Great Scott follows a working-class teen in the industrial wasteland of 1980’s Manchester, England who is so fed up with his existence that he longs to live out the big screen fantasies of everyone’s favorite reluctant time traveler, Marty McFly. And that’s all we know about the plot at this time. Given our ’80s remake mania, approaching that bygone (and best forgotten) era on this meta-level could prove more interesting that this project sounds at the moment.
More significantly (to me, anyway), this is perhaps the first time a non-winning contestant of On the Lot has made news for landing a directing gig. That show was supposed to jump-start a reality show competition about aspiring filmmakers, but it never caught on (despite how entertainingly inept some of the contestants were). Hawkins did not win the big prize — a development deal with DreamWorks — but he has continued to work in the industry since then. Stay tuned for more details as this one churns on.
Does this sound like something you’d like to see? Should we maybe start an obsession with the 1880’s, just to change things up?