New Line Cinema and HBO Max have acquired the rights to an untitled UFO script based on a Leslie Kean novel. According to Deadline, film and television producer Laura Bickford has teamed up with New Line and HBO Max to work on the film which will focus on fact-based modern government investigations into UFO’s. Bryce Kass has penned the script.

Investigative reporter Leslie Kean has been documenting her journey while investigating and covering unexplained phenomenons for many years. She is most notable for books about UFOs and the afterlife, and her most well-known UFO novel is UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record. 

The movie will tell the story of Luis Elizondo while he was the head of the Pentagon Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) and Christopher Mellon, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, who helped bring the previously secret Pentagon program and its official UFO videos to light in 2017.

Kass is best-known for being the screenwriter of Lizzie starring Chloë Sevigny and Kristen Stewart. He is also currently working on a 5-episode series with Gus Van Sant that Van Sant will direct and is writing a television pilot for Daft Punk. 

Bickford is the award winning producer of Traffic, Che, Duplicty, and Arbitrage. When asked about the upcoming film, Bickford stated, “It is astonishing how the UFO story has been snowballing in the serious press. We couldn’t be more excited to be finally bringing this timely extraordinary story of Leslie and Lue to screens everywhere with the filmmaking team at New Line.”