Universal has just emerged triumphant in a bidding war for the hot new spec script Safe House that – wonders clearly will never cease – is actually an original concept written by one of the editors of American gossip title Us Magazine, David Guggenheim.
When he wasn’t approving stories about Eva Longoria or Brangelina, Guggenheim was at home dreaming up the story of a US intelligence agent charged with making sure a prisoner stays alive in a safe house in a war-torn chunk of South America.
Naturally, things don’t go to plan, and soon the pair are on the run across the local terrain.
Everyone with scriptwriting aspirations can prepare to fire bolts of envy at the writer, who, according to the LA Times, didn’t even properly start writing the thing until a few months ago, aiming to be finished before his wife delivered their first child (he won: she’s due next week).
"I'd come home at 2 a.m. after an issue close and I was still wired, so I'd sit down and write," he says. "I think it helped that Safe House is 180 degrees from anything you'd see in Us.”
Aside from his day job, Guggenheim does have some Hollywood connections – brother Marc is one of the scriptwriters on Green Lantern and his other sibling Eric penned the hockey film Miracle. "I only hope that it gives everyone else out there working on something like this hope."
We’d write more, but we really need to get back to… er… something important. And magazine related. Just in case the editor’s reading this.