The temporal ripples from last year's Looper are continuing to wash over Hollywood, with studio and production company radars especially tuned to detect high-concept thrillers. One such is Selfless, being developed between Film District and Endgame Entertainment. The arch-visualist Tarsem Singh is in talks to direct, and on the cast side, Ryan Reynolds is considering putting his name above the title.
The screenplay is by Alex and David Pastor, who wrote and directed the 2009 indie pandemic horror Carriers. The idea at the heart of Selfless is mind transference, with a dying wealthy older man getting his consciousness moved into a younger host. The process doesn't quite go according to plan though, when it transpires that the corpse he's now inhabiting was a murder victim.
This leads to some confusion on the part of the killers who now think they botched their job and come back to finish it off properly. There's also a mystery element, with our hero putting the story together of why his host was murdered in the first place.
Director and star seem a good fit for the material, we'd say. Reynolds has a proven track record both in run-and-gun roles and in the more fantastical side of things. And Tarsem (Immortals, Mirror Mirror) dealt with strange technology in The Cell. This one doesn't sound as if it will have space for surreal VR landscapes, but he'll have something bizarre up his sleeve, mark our words.