Nancy Roberts
S.S. Wilson
Brent Maddock
Ron Underwood
Linda Drake
Press Release - 7/1/08
The Stampede Team is back in
the saddle! Well, they weren’t really out of the saddle; they’ve
just been on different horses. Since wrapping up Tremors – The
Series, for the Sci-Fi Network, Nancy Roberts, Brent Maddock and S.
S. Wilson have been individually involved in many projects, some outside
of Stampede.
In 2007, Maddock and Wilson wrote The Marine Mammal Project at
Disney and the remake of Smokey and the Bandit at Universal. Currently
they’re adapting a new book for the screen at Sony BMG, The Adventures
of Slim and Howdy, working with Country mega-stars Brooks and Dunn.
Also, they’re writing an all-new remake of the first script they
ever sold, Short Circuit, for original producers David Foster and
John Hyde at Dimension Films.
Ron Underwood, in addition to his feature films (most recently 2005’s In the Mix, starring Usher), has worked non-stop directing episodes of popular TV series Ugly Betty, Eli Stone, Boston Legal, Monk, and more. His movie for Showtime, Stealing Sinatra (with William H. Macy and David Arquette), told the off-beat true-life story the kidnapping of Frank Sinatra’s son. His TV special movies, Holiday in Handcuffs and Santa Baby, set consecutive audience records in 2006 and 2007, each becoming the most viewed program in the history of the ABC Family Channel.
Stampede founder Nancy Roberts continues her writing career, and love affair with the American West, with an upcoming original novel, Arizona Strip. She devotes the majority of her film activities to overseeing the development and financing of Stampede’s original productions. The latest of these is bringing the whole Stampede team together again.
It is called Night Crew. Roberts (packager of the original Tremors and producer of Tremors 2,3,and 4) will produce. Underwood is aboard to direct (as he did the original Tremors). The script is of course by S. S. Wilson and Brent Maddock.
Like Tremors, Night Crew is a fast-moving monster tale full of quirky characters, scary moments, and laugh-out-loud humor, but this time in an urban setting. The script is fine-tuned in budget and concept. As Roberts says (decrying the cumbersome studio development process), “At Stampede, we write to shoot.”
And that’s not all that’s
happening. In the coming months, we’re launching something new on
the Stampede site: posting chapters of one of our fantasy adventure stories
in novel form. Watch for the first installment of Zoo Ship, the tale of
four fishermen who meet a crafty planet-hopping alien in the land of 10,000
lakes.