If we had to pick one Netflix original movie that’s coming soon to the streamer, it would have to be The Adam Project. Directed by Shawn Levy, The Adam Project stars Ryan Reynolds as a man who must travel back in time to team up with his adolescent self and together, find their father (Mark Ruffalo) who has information essential to save the world. In addition to Reynolds and Ruffalo, The Adam Project also stars Jennifer Garner, Zoe Saldana, Catherine Keener, and newcomer Walker Scobell as the younger version of Reynolds’ character.
Time travel and Reynolds are an incredible movie pairing, to be sure. It’s a pairing made possible in part by screenwriter Jonathan Tropper, whose work on The Adam Project script will be seen when the movie hits Netflix. Recently, Collider’s own Christina Radish had the chance to speak with Tropper about The Adam Project during an interview primarily about the release of Tropper’s Cinemax series Banshee on HBO Max. One of our most pressing questions for Tropper had to do with his handling of the time travel plot device. Was this aspect of The Adam Project story the reason he boarded the project to rework earlier drafts written by Jennifer Flackett, Mark Levin, and T.S. Nowlin, respectively?
Tropper shared with Collider, “To me, the time was just a device. The movie is not a hardcore sci-fi time travel movie. It’s a movie about people,” and went on to explain that “for me, it was more about the characters and the story of this boy who’s lost his father and is trying to come to terms with what that means, through a really interesting adventure. I’m never gonna write a Christopher Nolan-type movie about time travel. That wouldn’t interest me. For me, it’s more about finding that story that appeals to the little kid in all of us.”
As previously mentioned, Tropper is the most recent screenwriter to board The Adam Project but he brought with him a wealth of writing experience to the project. In addition to writing on Banshee, Tropper has also written episodes of Warrior, Vinyl, and adapted the script for the Levy-directed 2014 dramedy This Is Where I Leave You from his own novel of the same name. So, how exactly did Tropper get involved with The Adam Project?
“I fell into this TV career of genre action,” Tropper began. “It’s not what my first love was. I grew up as a much more mainstream Hollywood movie fan. I was a big Steven Spielberg fan. The four quad adventures of my childhood are what made me love movies – Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Star Wars, and things like that. Then, I became a novelist who wrote grounded literary fiction about screwed-up humans, but real humans, not action show humans.”
He continued, explaining, “The TV thing was an odd left turn for me; the fact that the first thing I sold was Banshee. I had first come out to Hollywood, trying to sell shows that were much more like my books, dramedies about families and things like that, and I just couldn’t sell them. So, I ended up going to my love for action movies and went down that road, but my heart always remained in those big family adventure films too.”
“The Adam Project is something that I’ve been working on for eight years,” Tropper shared with us. “I wrote it eight years ago and I just really fought hard to keep it alive at the studio and to keep them looking for the right way to make it, but it’s not really a departure for me. The TV stuff is the departure for me.”
We were also curious to know what Tropper’s experience working with Reynolds was like. Reynolds serves as a producer on The Adam Project in addition to his leading man duties, so he worked closely with Tropper in getting this movie on its feet.
Tropper offered up an exciting nugget about his working relationship with Reynolds, telling Collider,
Yes. First of all, he’s also a producer on the film. He and Shawn Levy, the director (who I’ve worked with before), spent a lot of time pouring over the script, and Ryan gave a lot of input into the script, absolutely. He’s very sharp-witted and his wit is very specific. It’s not just his wit, his sense of character is very sharp. We spent a lot of time honing the script together once he came on board.
Tropper’s comments about The Adam Project only increase our interest in this Netflix original and we’re more than ready to what his script will look like onscreen.
The Adam Project doesn’t yet have a release date on Netflix.
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