We didn't know a heck of a lot about Almanac when it was announced last month. We knew it would be produced by Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes imprint, and was some kind of found footage sci-fi flick in the vein of Chronicle. Behind the camera would be Dean Israelite, the cousin of Jonathan Liebesman, who just so happens to be directing that Ninja Turtles flick nobody seems to want. Andrew Stark and Jason Pagan wrote the script that we knew absolutely nothing about, until now that is.
Our homie Brendon Connelly over Bleeding Cool was tipped off by a reader to some insider info on the film, and...yeah, there's a pretty strong Back to the Future II influence there....
The lead character, David, is a smart kid in high school but he’s finding dating hard. He’s drawn to Jessie, the typical popular girl, and decides that he’ll try to attract her by winning the science fair, and the college scholarship that will net him. Bless.
David’s late father was a scientist and so he looks through his Dad’s stuff for ideas – and he finds two things of note. One gives him the ability to time travel… and the other is a sports almanac. Anybody who has seen Back to the Future 2 can guess where this is headed.
Two more of David’s friends travel back through time with him to abuse the almanac. Timelines get messed with, we learn more about David’s Dad’s research and there’s apparently a couple of pretty big twists....
Brendon was apparently able to figure out what those twists are pretty easily. I have some suspicions on what they could be and I'm sure you probably do, too. We've all seen our share of time travel flicks at this point. This one's moving pretty fast, but just just how fast is going to depend a lot on the casting. Apparently the lead characters spend a lot of time together and the story's success will depend on the relationships and interactions between them.
Almanac sounds pretty good to me, but it's tempered by not really knowing anything about the director or the screenwriters.
