Writer Jon Spaihts Talks the Long Road to the Big Screen for 'Passengers'
With Passengers hitting the theater next week, writer Jon Spaihts has spoken to Comingsoon regarding the sci-fi, star-studded pic that stars Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, and discusses the film's long process to the big screen.
Spaihts said the concept was born nearly a decade ago. "The notion of someone being on one of these ships and surrounded by every conceivable form of life support with every need met except that there’s no other people. The darkness of that grabbed me instantly and it seemed to lead from a series of necessary steps to a story. What would that person do? What ordeals would he go through? Where would that bring him? How does his struggle for sanity relate to the question of why he woke up in the first place?
"In one half-hour conversation, the entire spine of the story jumped out my brain. Although there has been a lot of writing, outlining, rewriting and development, the core of the story really hasn’t changed since that original 30-minute talk. Sometimes that happens."
On keeping the main character's loneliness relatable and not solely drawing pity from the audience, Spaihts said that "that's the animating force of this story. There are moral quandaries knit into its fabric.
"The premise of it encapsulates a number of very hard questions. Ideally, people see the movie and they’ll walk away asking, “What would I have done? What am I capable of doing? What am I capable of enduring? What am I capable of forgiving? What are the limits of love for me? What would I give up for love? What would I give up for my dreams?”
Source: Comingsoon
