EXCLUSIVE: What a great get. New Regency has just acquired The Skies Belong To Us, an adapted screenplay from Michelle Ashford (Master of Sex). The film project, based on the book The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking by Brendan I. Koerner, is about an Army veteran named Roger Holder and girlfriend Cathy Kerkow hijacking a Western Airlines Flight in a protest against the war in Vietnam. Through a series of events, they fled across an ocean with a ransom of $500K, which brought them infamy around the world.
Ashford will produce with Sarah Timberman. Koerner, a longtime contributor to Wired magazine, will be tthe executive producer. Ashford and Timberman were also the executive producers on Masters of Sex, along with Timberman’s producing partner Carl Beverly. Timberman/Beverly also were the executive producers on Justified, and currently are the executive producers on Elementary and Seal Team through her Timberman/Beverly production company.
The story of The Skies Belong To Us centers around a kind of Bonnie & Clyde of the Skies. When Kerkow rebelled against her white conservative upbringing and fell in love with the African-American Holder, the two made a decision to start a new life together somewhere far away – and ended up carrying out the longest distance hijacking in American history.
Ashford is the creator and executive producer of the Showtime drama Masters of Sex and she has written for the HBO miniseries John Adams and The Pacific. She recently adapted Undaunted Courage for HBO, which is the Stephen Ambrose account of the Lewis and Clark expedition. She is currently working on an adaptation of Operation Mincemeat, a non-fiction spy story set in WWII.
Ashford, Koerner, and Timberman are repped by CAA. Koerner is also repped by The Zoe Pagnamenta Agency.
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