“The Traveler” is one of several projects currently in the works involving Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein, two directors who made a real splash earlier this year with “Final Destination Bloodlines.” The sixth film in one of Hollywood’s biggest brand-name horror franchises was also the most successful entry of said franchise, both with critics and at the box office. While Lipovsky and Stein declined to return for the forthcoming seventh film, they’re still going to keep themselves quite busy for the foreseeable future.
“The Traveler” – A Stellar Combination of Time Travel and “Family Drama”
“The Traveler” will be an adaptation of a forthcoming sci-fi novel of the same name by Joseph Eckert, whose other books include the coming-of-age tale “Nine-Mile Road,” the quasi-comedic thriller “Skip Chase,” and several works that incorporate sci-fi and supernatural concepts into a Vietnam War (or post-Vietnam War) storyline. “The Traveler” is billed on Amazon as “a heart-wrenching time travel epic and a devastating family drama” in which a protagonist named Scott Treder must somehow rescue his family despite “jumping forward in time against his will.”
Via Deadline, Lipovsky and Stein both explained that they’ve been extremely keen to make “The Traveler” for six years now, ever since they first read a draft of a script back when the project was attached to MGM. “The second it became available,” Lipovsky testified, “we were in there the next day pitching our hearts out to be on that film.” (Now, the project belongs to Paramount Pictures).
Stein elaborated that it has “everything we love in terms of an original sci-fi story that is very grounded, in terms of character, but has a very elevated theme of what it’s trying to say,” expressing the hope that their film adaptation will be comparable to Denis Villeneuve’s brilliant alien think-piece adaptation “Arrival” (2016).
Just One among Several Stein-Lipovsky Projects
“The Traveler,” it turns out, is far from the only item laid on Stein’s and Lipovsky’s shared professional plate. They’ve already finished production on “Freaks 2,” an upcoming sequel to the 2018 low-budget sci-fi thriller that was their feature-film debut. They’ve entered a deal with Warner Bros. to co-write “Gremlins 3.” They’re also attached to two short-story adaptations: one, “The Earthling,” is a sci-fi tale, while the other, “Long Lost,” is described by Deadline as a cross between “What Lies Beneath” (a haunted-house horror thriller) and “Rosemary’s Baby” (a pregnancy-based Satanic horror film).
Conclusion – A Rich Future for Two Committed Filmmakers
In their statements to Deadline, Stein and Lipovsky confessed to feeling a great deal of pressure with all these diverse projects (including, in the case of “Gremlins 3,” a legacy sequel to a classic franchise) riding on them. Nonetheless, Lipovsky asserted, “we know how incredibly precious this moment is and how fortunate we are to be in this moment.” He said that they aim to make films “that change what people think is possible with genre… All the movies we’re looking at are horror, sci-fi, fantasy, all in that space, which is everything that we love. But we want to do something new with it that will surprise people.”
From an audience standpoint, it’s hard to imagine a more exciting motivation for two filmmakers to have. Here’s wishing these two prolific visionaries the best of fortune in all their cinematic labors to come.
