Untitled Moon Project script

Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Premise: A renegade group of former space employees travels the world, stealing space equipment in an attempt to go back to the moon.

About: A relatively unknown project that's being directed by Doug Liman which will star Jake Gyllenhaal. The script was originally penned by Liman with the help of 'Along Came Polly' director John Hamburg, but has been rewritten by 'Black Hawk Down' scribe Mark Bowden. It's unclear which draft this is but I'm fairly certain it's the Bowden draft. Dan Mazeau and Ken Nolan are also credited with working on the screenplay. Writer: Mark Bowden.

Doug Liman is one of the more underrated directors out there. No one gives him any credit for Swingers but the guy figured out a way to balance Vaughn and Favreau's love for improvisation with a production schedule that couldn't afford second takes. Katie Holmes in "Go" (1999).

He went on to do "Go", a cool kinetic flick that played with time and still managed to differentiate itself from all the Pulp Fiction clones going out at the time. Then he started a franchise in the Bourne movies that had no business being as big as they were - since Matt Damon's career was basically in the cellar when the first film premiered.

His only misstep was the Hayden Christensen starrer "Jumper", which felt like the projectionist had accidentally fallen on the fast-forward button for the entirety of the movie. So when I heard that Mr. Liman would be directing a big-budget semi-sci-fi flick about going to the moon, I wanted to check out the script.

"A mysterious group of misfits is stealing rockets and boosters and, yes, even lunar landers from all over the world - even going so far as to leave "I.O.U.'s" in their wake. They appear to be a rogue collection of former space pilots and engineers led by a hot Eastern European woman named Anya. She's one of those "save the earth" type women... but on like a case of red bull. FBI and NASA officials find out that the group is following an outdated thesis project from an ex-NASA employee which proposes how to get to the moon at 1/10 the cost of any known mission. The author of this project is an Observation Center employee named Cole - a man who has no idea that any of this is going on.

Well he's about to. Because Cole is the last item on the list. One second he's staring at the moon, the next he's thrown into the back of a van, drugged, and when he wakes up, he's on a mission to the moon. Yes, Cole is sitting in the cockpit of an old rusted Kazakhstan rocket three seconds before liftoff! Cole is equal parts surprised, terrified, and sincerely pissed off.

Apparently Anya's group has dual motives: to mine Helium-3, a high performance energy source which can only be found on the moon and (I'm not kidding about this) to leave a Monk on the moon to establish a Lunar Lighthouse. Apparently nobody told Anya that the purpose of a Lighthouse is to guide incoming ships to safety. Since the only thing that's going to be heading towards the moon in the next 20 years is a meteor or two and the occasional Chinese satellite, I'd say Marco the Monk is going to have a a lot of free time on his hands.

What I learned: One thing I will give Luna is that it's well-researched".
Source: scriptshadow.blogspot.com