So what do you do when you’ve made film studios some mad scratch by writing the mega-successful “Transformers” and “Star Trek”? If you’re Alex Kurtzman, you dust off the pet project that’s been sitting on a shelf and direct it.
Kurtzman is planning to make the jump from writing to directing with “Welcome To People,” a family drama he wrote six years ago that doesn’t feature robots and take place in outer space. Instead, the story focuses on “a twentysomething man who, after the death of his father, must deliver $150,000 in cash to an alcoholic sister he didn’t know he had as well as her son, a 12-year-old with major anger management issues (at one point, he tries to blow up his middle school’s pool). The man doesn’t want to part with the money but still reaches out to them without telling them who he really is.”
The film is set up at DreamWorks where Kurtzman will produce alongside his writing partner Roberto Orci under their Paper Products shingle. We dig the premise, and it’s always exciting to see highly touted talent try their hand at something different. And the very least, it proves that some good can come out of those shitty, shitty “Transformers” movies.