Spike Doing Time Traveler Thing

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Spike Doing Time Traveler Thing

Wed., Jun. 18, 2008 6:35 AM PDT by Josh Grossberg

Alfonso Catalano/LaPresse/ZUMAPress.com

Spike Lee did Clockers. In keeping with the theme, his next project: Time Traveler.

Per Variety, the filmmaker will cowrite and direct the drama based on the memoir by Ronald Mallett, the physicist famed for working on plans for a real-life time machine

The 63-year-old Mallett was one of the first African-Americans to receive a doctorate in theoretical physics and currently teaches at the University of Connecticut. But he's perhaps best known for his obsession with bending time to his own will.

His inspiring pursuit was documented last year on an episode of public radio's This American Life. When he was 10 years old, Mallett's father died suddenly of a heart attack and ever since, Mallett sought to make time travel possible so he could rewind to that fateful day and change his dad's fate.

"[It's] a fantastic story on many levels [and] also a father-and-son saga of loss and love," Lee told Variety.

Lee apparently has a soft spot for time traveling.

The helmer was previously attached to the Fox thriller Selling Time, about a man who trades years off his life expectancy for the chance to relive the worst day of his life. He's since exited that project. Lee's next film is Miracle at St. Anna, about a division of all-black soldiers trapped behind enemy lines during World War II.