Empire was saying just next week that there’s been a shortage of time travel movies recently – or in the future, depending on when you’re from. And now, wouldn’t you know it, one has just been announced.
The film in question is The Thirteenth Hour, a New Line flick based on the upcoming novel of the same name from author Richard Doetsch.
Described as a cross between The Bourne Identity and The Time Traveler’s Wife – which is the sort of sentence that gets studio executives all hot and heavy – the novel follows a man who’s accused of murdering his wife, but who’s given a chance to go back in time, one hour at a time. Along the way, he pieces together clues that could not only tell him who killed his wife, but why – and, more importantly, might allow him to save her. We're guessing that things might come to a head in the thirteenth hour.
So there’s a bit of Memento in there as well, with a structure that plays out in reverse. Sounds intriguing – although much depends on the choice of a director who can make sense of all the to-ing and fro-ing.
Choosing that director will be the movie’s producer, Michael De Luca, making a return to the studio where he was president of production for eight years. "It's my first encounter with the new New Line,” he told Variety, “but I'm very comfortable there. It's familiar territory for me."