Paramount Lands ‘The Time Runner’ For Wes Ball To Direct; Steve Desmond & Michael Sherman Scripting

EXCLUSIVE: Paramount has acquired The Time Runner, a novella that Wes Ball will develop to direct. Steve Desmond & Michael Sherman will write the script. Sherman wrote the novella.

Ball will produce with Joe Hartwick Jr, his partner in Oddball Entertainment, the producing shingle that was just recently staked to a first look deal at Paramount. Ball worked closely at Fox with Emma Watts on the Maze Runner trilogy, before she moved over to become Paramount Motion Picture Group President.

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The storyline is being kept under wraps. Par senior veep Alex Jackson will oversee.

As writing partners, Desmond & Sherman’s screenplays have been voted onto the Black List for the past three years in a row, most recently with an adaptation of the Craig Davidson novel The Saturday Night Ghost Club.

Their previous script, Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers, sold to Warner Bros, and they recently adapted The Cabin at the End of the World for FilmNation, based on the Paul G. Tremblay novel.

Ball will next direct the Planet of the Apes reboot for 20th Century Studios.

Ball and Hartwick are repped by WME and Goodman, Genow. Desmond & Sherman are repped by APA, Management 360 and Ziffren Brittenham.

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