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Althoun
Menegroth
Mar 13 2019, 2:52am
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The Showrunners
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What do we know about JD Payne and Patrick McKay?
Not a heck of a lot, since they are relative unknowns with few credits to their names.
Apparently, they wrote the script for Stark Trek 4 (which I think has now been shelved), are participating in a Disney movie tickets be shown next year called "Jungle Cruise" and wrote a screenplay called "Escape" that got placed in the 2017 annual Blacklist of the best unproduced scripts in Hollywood (from the suggestions of over 275 film executives).
Has anyone been able to find anything else out about these guys?
Here's the plot summary for their Blacklisted screenplay:
http://www.tracking-board.com/the-black-list-2017/
ESCAPE
by JD Payne & Patrick McKay
Between 1788 and 1868, the British Empire shipped more than 150,000 convicts to penal colonies in Australia and the notoriously brutal Tazmania. No distinction was made between first time and repeat offenders. This is the story of one of those prisoners. A wrongly accused man who is taken from his home and sent across the world to serve a five-year prison term. He quickly realizes his only chance of seeing his family again is to escape the prison with a gang of cohorts and play the odds of surviving the deadly terrain that waits on the outside.
(This post was edited by Althoun on Mar 13 2019, 2:55am)
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jlj93byu
Ossiriand
Mar 13 2019, 3:52am
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I've Known About Them For Years
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I don't know them personally, but am only a couple degrees of separation from JD Payne. He's a pretty upstanding, honest individual. His inspiration for writing came while he was serving as a missionary in Italy for a two year period, and he consistently felt drawn to tell life stories. He has always felt driven to focus on the heart of a story by focusing on the hearts of its characters, and to bring to life the inner workings of his characters.
I'm also not worried about excessive nudity or Amazon going all GOT on us simply because I know of JD Payne's character and he's not one to indulge in that type of content to so severe a degree, or even anywhere near it. They have forayed into biblical epics, including a screenplay called "Goliath" about David and Goliath that was sold a few years ago and is in the process of being made.
Also, JD and Patrick have been best friends since they were in high school together back in the 90s, and they work well together. They are a great duo. Obviously their work on Star Trek is more well known, and they both grew up watching Star Trek TNG, DS9, and Voyager. I found an interview from a few years ago where he talked about working on Star Trek, and shared a little that could be an insight into his approach:
“At its core, Star Trek has always been about adventure, exploration and wonder, with an optimistic sense of the future, and all its possibilities. It’s a massive playground; we’re so excited to be diving in on it,” Payne said.
The new movie is certainly going to be something special and beautiful, if Payne’s hints are any indication. “Star Trek is unique in that it often grapples with complex ethical and moral dilemmas. We’d love to create a situation like that where you really could be a person of any background and come down on both sides of how you should respond, where you can walk out and say, ‘You know, I really don’t know what I would do. What would you do? What’s right to do?‘ and get the audience to really engage.”
The latter bits are more interesting, regarding his interest in moral dilemmas. Sorry I don't have much more specific, kind of general character stuff, but from what I know about him I am not worried about gratuitous GOT type content.
(This post was edited by jlj93byu on Mar 13 2019, 3:54am)
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Althoun
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Mar 13 2019, 11:29am
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From the information in your post, I managed to dig a little deeper and discovered that one of the pair, at least, JD Payne - is a practising Mormon. I don't think his co-writer, Patrick McKay, is Mormon (but I don't know?). I read that they sometimes have competing worldviews but given their long friendship always complement one another.
I would personally like if one is religious and one is less so. The yin and yang can balance each other out, preventing one from going too far.
This should reassure those who are concerned about the prospect of excessive nudity being shown, since he's apparently very keen to honour the ethical framework of his religion in his writing.
It might also make him much more attuned to the subtler Christian themes of Tolkien's work and the biblical allusions.
Moreover, I'm encouraged by Payne's emphasis upon moral ambiguity and making viewers recognize the merits in two different points of view. Hopefully, this will help him in dealing with Annatar and Celebrimbor's complicated motivations, as well as the decline of Numenor and it's growing imperial exploitation of Middle-Earth natives. The writers already appear to have homed in upon this on the maps, by showing how Enedhwaith and Miniriath had been deforested over the years.
(This post was edited by Althoun on Mar 13 2019, 11:30am)
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Solicitr
Mithlond
Apr 14 2019, 4:33pm
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their previous credits include "Godzilla vs Kong"....
They do appear to be thoughtful and subtle, and attuned to morality as an aspect of any property's universe. That alone puts them well ahead of the brutish Jackson!
But still,
“At its core, Star Trek has always been about adventure, exploration and wonder, with an optimistic sense of the future, and all its possibilities.
Isn't very Tolkienian at all. The Second Age is an era of pessimissim and a descent into darkness; in general, Tolkien's history is "the long defeat."
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kzer_za
Menegroth
Apr 14 2019, 6:47pm
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Star Trek's optimism is a complex matter
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The Original Series is actually less strictly utopian than how Gene Roddenberry's conception of Trek evolved after. TNG was saved from its disastrous first season or two by pulling away from the utopian excesses Roddenberry tried to force on it at the beginning, and Deep Space Nine (the favorite of many fans, possibly most) is partly Star Trek deconstructing itself and showing the limits and darker corners of its own vision. While Trek is, on the whole, hopeful about the future, this comes with many qualifiers and shades of grey.
Their talk of moral dilemmas alludes to this, I think.
(This post was edited by kzer_za on Apr 14 2019, 6:48pm)
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Solicitr
Mithlond
Apr 15 2019, 2:20am
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DS9 is in my mind the finest thing the Trek franchise has yet produced, in great part because Behr and the writers were so willing, even eager, to deconstruct the happy-clappy "Roddenberry box." I also credit Enterprise with being willing to depict grey-vs-grey moral situations.
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