While Alex Kurtzman (along with Roberto Orci) made his name writing big budget movies like Transformers, Star Trek and the upcoming Cowboys & Aliens – and is currently taking over Hollywood as a producer on the big and small screen – for his directorial debut he’s thinking smaller with Welcome To People.
However while the movie isn’t a massive action spectacle, he’s already got Chris Pine on board to star and now THR reports that Elizabeth Banks is negotiating a deal to join him, adding to her already busy schedule. The movie tells the story of a struggling twentysomething man (Pine) who, after flying home to LA for the funeral of his estranged record-producer father, discovers that the will stipulates that he must deliver $150,000 in cash to a 30-year-old alcoholic sister he never knew existed, and her troubled 12-year-old son. Banks will play the sister.
Welcome To People was actually written six years ago by Kurtzman, Orci and Jody Lambert, but it’s only now that Alex has the clout to get it made with him in the director’s seat and Dreamworks funding it.