Spike Lee takes on TIME TRAVELER

By Matt Holmes /

Ronald Mallett doesn't just believe in time travel but amazingly he has spent years of his life theorizing and building a time machine so he can travel back and tell his dad not to smoke as it will lead him to suffer a fatal heart attack at 33, when Mallet himself was just 10 years old. No, seriously. This guy has a brain, one of the first African-Americans to have a P.H.D. in theoretical physics - he's an intelligent genius but his motivations are something out of a comic book movie. His obsession with going back in time to save his dad began as a young teenager when he read an illustrated guide to War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells and then dedicated his whole life in order to try and save his father. Kinda sweet and terribly sad at the same time. You can read about his ordeals in his memoirs Time Traveler: A Scientist's Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality published in 2006.

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Said book has just been picked up by Spike Lee and his production company, attaching himself to co-write the project and direct what he calls a "fantastic story on many levels (and) also a father and son saga of loss and love." It would appear this time travel film, a subject which Lee has become obsessed with himself - has taken over his long time in development film Selling Time - about a guy who is given the chance to relive and change the worst day in his life in exchange for seven years of his life expectancy which he tried to make with Tom Cruise, but for whatever reason it never got close to filming. Love time travel movies and I can't think of any that is as personal as this one - even with the fact there won't be any time travel! source - variety