‘The Shack’ Author Wm. Paul Young Bringing Spiritual Poem ‘Footprints’ Project To Film & TV

EXCLUSIVE: The Shack author Wm Paul Young will develop and produce a feature film and TV anthology series based on the famed Christian-faith poem Footprints and based off the spec script by Vincent Prezioso.

Pic tells the story of a high school gridiron star raised by a single father who lacks the resources to send his son to college. The young man has a dream to be recruited by Michigan to play college football at the Division 1 level. That dream is met with overpowering obstacles starting with his father, a recent widower and New York City sanitation worker, who pushes his son to take the safer route and become a civil servant. Their conflict is intensified when outside forces also conspire against the wanna-be college athlete who begins to doubt everything important in his life — his father, his dream for the future, the purpose of life, and any sense of faith. A stranger he meets in the depths of his pessimism and resulting paralysis becomes the key to finding the path forward.

The Footprints TV series will spans various genres and feature characters who suddenly find themselves at the center of supernatural events.

Producing Footprints are John Logigian and Micheal Flaherty, who co-founded and ran Walden Media and served as president where they launched The Chronicles of Narnia film franchise. In addition Nicho Young will produce.

Logigian has been involved in setting up a number of slates at Walden Media, Miramax Films, Jean Doumanian Productions, and Orion Pictures.

Flaherty and Epiphany executive produced several other movies including the recent surprise hit I Can Only Imagine.

Logigian and Flaherty stated, “We are thrilled to be working with a master storyteller as accomplished as Paul. There is no one who touches the heart as movingly and with such imagination, a one-two punch when it comes to pleasing and entertaining a film and television audience.”

“This initial script is a wonderful launch pad for a compelling and entertaining film and I am thrilled to be invited to participate in framing and helping to craft great story-telling on screen,” said Young.

Prezioso began developing Footprints after his first reading of the poem during an acting class at Fordham University in 1993, the same year he met his producing partner and New York attorney Tony D’Aiuto. Prezioso was also a Motion Picture Academy Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship Quarterfinalist with his screenplay The Action, a/k/a Saint by Numbers. He has also appeared on such series as Law and Order, One Life to Live and Guiding Light. Prezioso and D’Aiuto also produced the feature film Lost Revolution starring Melissa Leo in which Prezioso contributed as a writer and played a supporting role.