Writer-director-producer John Ridley has inked a deal with Miramax for what will likely be his next feature film, which he will both write and direct.

Ridley will adapt a short story from the 1966 science fiction collection of 10 short tales by author Robert Silverberg titled “Needle in a Timestack.” The specific story from the collection that will be adapted is about a devoted husband who is determined to save his marriage after it is destroyed by a time traveler.

Courtesy of the book’s Kindle edition Amazon.com page, the author had this to say about “Needle in a Timestack”: “At a science-fiction convention many years ago I heard a friend of mine say to an annoying young man who was trying to interrupt our conversation, “Go away, kid, or I’ll change your future.” Whereupon I said, without thinking much about it, ‘No, tell him that you’ll change his PAST,’ and suddenly I realized that I had handed myself a very nice story idea. I wrote it in January, 1982 – its intricate time-travel plot unfolded for me with marvelous clarity as I worked – and sent it off to PLAYBOY, which was publishing a lot of my science fiction back then. It ran in the July, 1983 issue, and a few years later Miramax bought it for filming, but I’m still waiting for them to make the movie. I do love writing time-travel stories, though, and this is a particular favorite of mine among all of that sort that I’ve done.”

Assuming the above to be accurate, it means that Miramax (which would’ve been owned and operated by the Weinstein brothers at the time) has had the rights to “Needle in a Timestack” since the 1980s. So Silverberg finally is about to see the work as a film (he’s 82 years old now).

Vince Gerardis (“Game of Thrones”) and Matt Kennedy (“Predestination”) will executive produce. Zanne Devine, Head of Film and TV, and David Thwaites, senior VP, Film, are overseeing the project for Miramax.

John Ridley is certainly very busy, stacking up project after project. With his “American Crime” anthology series performing well for ABC, and a feature documentary on the 1992 Los Angeles riots as well as his maligned Showtime period drama-thriller “Guerrilla,” both premiering this month, the writer/director/producer continues to be a creative whose talents are in demand. There’s also the scripting he did for MGM’s remake of the classic sword-and-sandals epic “Ben-Hur” last year; and he’s developing a new Marvel series for ABC, which has been described as a “reinvention” of an existing Marvel superhero character, although no word on who that character is, as details are being kept under wraps; and he sold a crime drama pilot also to ABC titled “Presence,” which will follow a former Army Counter Insurgency Operative named Presence Foster, beginning a new career as a private investigator in Los Angeles; finally, he’s teamed up with Regina King to adapt author Kim Reid’s award-winning 2007 book “No Place Safe: A Family Memoir” as a series for the FX network.

Ridley is repped by Brillstein Entertainment Partners and Rohner & Walerstein.

Needle in a Timestack

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