Gotham/Principal And Stellar Partner On Alien Abduction Pic ‘Captured’

Maze Runner: Scorch Trials producers Gotham/Principal and WGA award winners Bryce Zabel and Jackie Zabel of Stellar Productions have announced a partnership to make the feature film Captured. It’s based on the book Captured! The Betty And Barney Hill UFO Experience: The True Story Of The World’s First Documented Alien Abduction, by Stanton Friedman and Kathleen Marden.

The film will follow Betty and Barney Hill, an interracial couple from Portsmouth, New Hampshire who claimed to have been abducted by a UFO in 1961. The Hills claimed to have been studied by extraterrestrials, then returned to their lives with missing memories that were later retrieved under hypnosis. The film will examine the birth of modern UFO lore, and place the events in a context of both Cold War paranoia and the country’s struggle over race relations.

Bryce Zabel is writing the script; the former CNN correspondent has previously written the film Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and for TV series such as The Crow, L.A. Law, and Lois And Clark. Zabel is also an adjunct professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts , teaching two advanced courses about writing hourlong TV dramas. The deal was brokered by Eric Robinson of Gotham/Principal and Jason Leibovitch of Leibo Management on behalf of Stellar.