While 2000’s “The Tipping Point” was writer Malcolm Gladwell‘s first book, it was 2005’s “Blink” that put him on the map. And the bestseller, all about the adaptive unconscious, captured the public’s imagination so much that Gladwell and screenwriter Stephen Gaghan had plans to make the book into a feature film. But tragedy derailed those plans, and THR reports that the pair talked about the unproduced screenplay for “Blink” on a new limited series for Gladwell’s podcast “Revisionist History.”
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The premiere episode of “Development Hell,” all about Hollywood projects that never managed to get greenlit, hits close to home for Gladwell and Gaghan. The two writers spent years developing a screenplay, eventually turning it into a package with Leonardo DiCaprio set to star and also produce the project. And according to Gladwell, Hollywood was enamored with the script. “The town went nuts,” Gladwell recalled. “We pick a studio, we huddle with our agents, we pick a winner, checks are cashed. Some brilliant producer is assigned to our case, and off we go.”
“But despite so much interest, the project languished for three years. “Only it never happens. A year passes, then two years, then three years,” Gladwell continued. “And this is why we’re doing “Development Hell,”an entire series devoted to scripts that never happen. This is always the most devastating part of the story, the plot twists that happen off the page.” And the plot twist Gladwell has in mind is what happened after Gaghan did some edits on the script after it landed at Universal in 2008 and, after making the main character ten years younger, DiCaprio passed on the film. It turned out Gaghan had meet another young actor who he’d really become taken with, and thought he could be the film’s new lead: Heath Ledger.
Gaghan insisted that DiCaprio could have still thrived as the “Blink” lead, but he’d seen something special in Ledger. I’d gotten to be very, very close with him instantly. I just had a real connection with him that was kind of unusual and really special to me,” Gaghan remembered. “I got really excited and I started seeing him as the main character. Once I started seeing that I couldn’t unsee it, and obviously it was very delicate in a way. Leo’s totally cool. I mean, obviously, he has a thousand choices, but in my mind it was a big deal.”
But Ledger’s tragic death came soon after he became interested in Gladwell and Gaghan’s project. On January 22, 2008, a housekeeper found an unresponsive Ledger at his Manhattan apartment, having died accidentally from an overdose on a lethal mix of prescription medications. Next to him on the nightstand? A copy of Gladwell’s book, and a copy of Gaghan’s script with the screenwriter’s phone number on it. “They were there with the body and our script was in bed with him, and your book was on the bedside table,” said Gaghan. “I think my number was on the script, like written. These guys, as you can imagine, they are in shock and they dialed that number and I don’t know why.”
Gaghan received a call from Ledger’s father Kim while traveling, and when he heard the news about the actor’s death, he knew he couldn’t continue with the “Blink” project. “I’m in an airport with my wife just going from one place to another, and I literally just collapse, never happened to me before or since,” Gaghan continued. “My feet went out from under me. I just literally sat down because I was like, what? The emotion, what they were going through, I should not have been a party to in any way really, and yet as a human or as somebody who just cares, I just was there and I was listening and my wife was looking at me. I remember her face and I was just like, I was speechless. I just listened and listened and listened. It was just really, really sad. And it’s still sad. For me, I just had to put a pin in it.”
The screenwriter had formed such a bond with Ledger before his death that he “had a feeling they were going to make a bunch of movies together.” But after the actor’s devastating death, Gaghan knew he had to move on from “Blink.” That didn’t stop him from looking at the unproduced script before he joined Gladwell on “Development Hell,” though. “I got it out right before we got on, I was reading it, I was just like, I ran to find my wife, that we’re still married, thank goodness. And I was like, I could be crazy but I think this script is really good,” said Gaghan. “We really had something really special and we might’ve been ahead of our time or something,” “Maybe it’s time to bring Blink back to life?” Gladwell responded. “If there’s someone listening in some big office somewhere in Hollywood, I will get on a plane tomorrow if that’s what it takes.”
Upcoming episodes of “Development Hell” will feature interviews with Cameron Crowe, Susannah Grant, Gary Goldman, Charles Randolph, and Neil LaBute about similar projects that never reached the big or small screen. New episode of the limited series premiere weekly through Gladwell’s podcast company, Pushkin Industries.