David McCloskey

Seidel's wife, Andy, is brought in to act as the production secretary.

And Seidel basically tells her what they're up to and that she's going to be working starting Monday in the offices of Studio 6.

production.

So by Sunday... Mendes has been in Hollywood for like 48 hours at this point.

And he's already got a company.

They've got the production company.

They have an office.

They have phones.

They need a movie, Gordon.

You need a movie.

You need a movie.

I think there might be some kind of analytic bias going on here with you choosing sci-fi in the desert.

Well, the same is true with the Dune films, the recent films, which are largely the desert scenes shot in Jordan near Wadi Rum.

So this connection of sort of desert, Middle East location and sci-fi, there's some grounding there from a film standpoint.

Yeah.

And Chambers tells Mendez that he actually has come across a script he'd been pitched months earlier.

And it is a script based on Roger Zelazny's 1967 Hugo-winning science fiction novel, Lord of Light.

Now, the Hugos are the premier annual literary awards for sci-fi and fantasy, so the novel's

big deal in the science fiction world.

And a producer named Barry Geller had bought the rights and put together a serious attempt to actually get this novel adapted for the screen.