Updated: Early Script found for SOURCE CODE

A few months ago I, like other movie bloggers, saw a trailer for Duncan Jones’ follow up film Source Code.  When I first saw it, I thought it looked like an interesting follow up to Jones’ film Moon, which I loved.  As I viewed the trailer a couple more times, I felt like I had seen or heard about this story before – which is kind of ironic considering the story.  We all know that scripts evolve over time and especially if a script is purchased by Hollywood or a studio.  Beyond the break, I figured out why this story was familiar….I read the script years ago and now, you can read it.

Before the popularity of Twitter, Myspace or even Facebook, many found online communities in message boards.  I am a member of many message boards still to this day.  One of which was a message board for local St. Louis Musicians called GTP-INC.  While the boards are still up today, they aren’t as active as they used to be years ago.  One person shared a lot of film geekism like I did.  He goes by the name of  ugh_doom.  His real name is Jason Sackett (according to the name on the screenplay).  Now prior to writing this post, I tried contacting him through the boards to run this story.  I still haven’t heard from him.  I even publicly replied to him on the boards and while he has had recent activity, I still haven’t heard a reply.  Another board member mentioned that it looked like he was ripped off which our “screenwriter” replied:

Thanks for the concern, man. It’s all good. I promise.

What this tells me is that he probably sold this script or the script wasn’t his in the first place.  Unfortunately, without his input, I couldn’t tell you which is correct or not.

After not hearing from him, I considered dropping this story.  However, I thought some people would still find this story interesting and might be interested in the script I read and see the evolution and changes made or compare the script to the film – as some people recently saw the film at SXSW.

Even after I didn’t hear from Mr. Sackett concerning his First Draft of the script he called Seventeen Minutes, I still investigated.  There were some inconstancies with the timeline though that bothered me and delayed this article from coming out sooner.  You see, Source Code‘s script was supposedly written and sold as a spec script to Universal by Ben Ripley – who is the credited screenwriter – in 2007 and was even on the Blacklist according to Slashfilm.com.  If you were to go to the thread that GTP-INC member ugh_doom started, you would find that he created the thread on August 28, 2009.  That changed my whole approach to this article since he posted his script 2 years later. 

The script that Jason Sackett posted took place in New York, not Chicago like the film and the main character had seventeen minutes not eight.  But, the name Colter is used in Sackett’s first draft and even the name Sean Fentress.

I haven’t seen Source Code as of yet but I’m sure that there are differences between the script that I read years ago and the finished film.  However, the one thing that is for certain is what I read was either a rip-off or leaked version of the original script  – which I couldn’t find anywhere to this day on the internet – or an actual early version of the story in script form.  Either way, for film geeks, it might be an interesting read.

As of right now, the script is still online via Megaupload.  Since I never heard from Mr. Sackett, I decided not to host his script but just to link to it.  Below you can find the link to download the script for yourself and have a read.

DOWNLOAD ‘SEVENTEEN MINUTES’ PDF NOW!

Update:  Even though I researched a majority of a day on this back in February, it looks like I finally got the answer to this whole story.  Turns out the copy uploaded – which I thought was formatted kind of kooky – was a word for word copy of Ben Ripley’s spec script.  The only thing that is different between the link above and the actual script is the cover page.

A tipster pointed me to a post on a website called ScriptShadow which published a script review on February 8, 2009.  A comment a week ago to this update (update posted on 3/24) was posted with a link to a PDF file that looks more like a scanned copy of a script.  This is relevant because of the formatting issues I saw on the copy posted on GTP-INC as it cries some legitimacy issues. However, that’s not to say that Mr. Sackett’s script couldn’t be typed up on a typewriter and scanned in to make it look authentic either.  The one thing that is for sure is that what we linked to was actually the script turned into Universal, word for word.