Take note aspiring screenwriters:  you, too, can sell your spec script from the hinters of Pennsylvania for $650,000 against $1 million!  Just make sure you attended the American Film Institute for a couple of years and have decent connections at Focus Features!

That’s how twenty-seven-year-old Brad Ingelsby did it, and now he’s on the verge of getting his screenplay, The Low Dweller, fast-tracked into production with Ridley Scott directing Leonardo DiCaprio.  How’s that going to work with Scott’s multi-project backlog and DiCaprio’s myriad commitments?  According to Variety, Ingelsby’s script is a down-and-dirty crime flick that can be shot in thirty-five days – which, frankly, sounds like just the change of pace Sir Ridley needs after the epic-in-scope duo of American Gangster and Body of Lies.  DiCaprio would play Slim, “a man who gets released after serving years in prison for murder, and wants only to follow through on his promise to marry his long-suffering girlfriend.”  But a grisly thing happens on the way to the altar:  Slim’s brother gets offed by some toughs involved in a midwestern gambling racket.  Though Slim is now free-and-clear of his last killing, he resolves to get revenge on his brother’s murder.  I’m sure everything works out for the best.

The script is being compared to No Country for Old Men, which is probably just exec-speak for violent and dour.  I’m not taking shots at Ingelsby sight unseen (the guy could be the next Eugene O’Neill for all I know), but splashy sales like this don’t always result in speedy productions; last I checked, we’re still waiting on The Ticking Man, Steinbeck’s Point of View and The Power of Duff. 

Relativity Media beat out four studios for the rights to The Low Dweller.  Let’s see if they can follow through and get the sucker made.