Neil Burger to Direct Young Adult Sci-Fi ‘Voyagers’ at AGC Studios

Follow-up to director’s “The Upside” will begin production this spring

Neil Burger
Getty Images

Neil Burger, the director of this month’s “The Upside” and “Divergent,” will move back to young adult sci-fi for his next feature film.

AGC Studios will fully finance and co-produce the thriller “Voyagers” for Burger to direct, the company’s chairman and CEO Stuart Ford announced Thursday.

Burger will direct from his own original screenplay, and he’ll also produce under his Nota Bene Productions banner. Basil Iwanyk and Brendon Boyea will produce via Thunder Road Films. Ford and AGC’s Head of Film Greg Shapiro are onboard as executive producers. “Voyagers” begins production this spring and is actively casting its key roles.

“Voyagers” focuses on 30 children sent into space on a multi-generational mission to reach and populate a newly discovered planet. After the adult captain of the mission is mysteriously killed, the young crew descends into chaos, reverting to a primitive, tribal state of being, and giving in to their most feral and animal desires.

“The box office track records of Neil and Basil speak for themselves and we’re very excited to be going on this sci-fi journey with them,” Ford said in a statement. “‘Voyagers’ promises to be a highly sophisticated and commercial feature film.”

“We are very fortunate that Neil has entrusted Thunder Road and AGC to bring this story to the big screen,” Iwanyk said in a statement. “It has all the elements of what have made Neil’s movies so successful – intelligent, emotional, provocative, and deeply human at the same time.”

The financing and co-production deal was negotiated by AGC’s VP of Legal & Business Affairs Anant Tamirisa on behalf of AGC with Jonathan Fuhrman, EVP of Business Affairs at Thunder Road. Burger is represented by CAA and attorneys Jackoway Austen Tyerman Wertheimer Mandelbaum Morris Bernstein Trattner & Klein.

AGC is currently also in pre-production on the Tate Taylor comedy “Breaking News in Yuba County” starring Allison Janney and Laura Dern, and Di Bonaventura Productions’ revenge thriller “The Secrets We Keep” starring Noomi Rapace and Joel Kinnaman to be directed by Yuval Adler.

Comments