Danny Wisentowski

that was that was the moment that when we first read this story that really connected us to it honestly was that it was so much so insane such stranger than fiction that we knew we had to pursue it yeah you can't you can't like that's a fly in the ointment you just can't you can't account for yeah um so so you guys so you do end up you get off the ground you well you wait when you switch planes you let everybody go right except for the crew a few of the crew members

Danny Wisentowski was a journalist in St.

Louis.

He wrote for the Riverfront Times, which is a weekly alt weekly in St.

Louis.

And he wrote a piece in 2016 called The Final Flight of Martin McNally, which we read, me and Joshua Shaver, who is my production company partner and co-director on American Skyjacker.

We'd been writing screenplays and selling screenplays for about six years in L.A.,

And in 2017, we started Pegalo Pictures, our production company, and we were picking up articles and optioning them and adapting them to scripts and selling them.

And this article blew us away and reached out to Danny and Danny said the other rights are available.

And we started the long process of trying to adapt it to a script.

And in the midst of that, we're working with Danny.

Danny was like, you know, Martin McNally is still alive.

He'd love to talk to you if you'd be interested in talking to him and putting him on camera.

And I said, man, just for posterity's sake, we should get this guy on camera.

He's living history, you know.

And so we went and we scrambled a crew.

We got shot with him for three or four days in St.

Louis in 2019.

And that is the vast majority of the interview you see in St.

the American Skyjacker documentary, and then realized we were now selling a documentary as well as trying to turn it into a scripted project and started shopping it around Los Angeles.