Caspian Tredwell-Owen

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Caspian Tredwell-Owen wrote a screenplay that, after being read by Steven Spielberg, was purchased by DreamWorks for a million dollars. The screenplay was re-written by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci and became the 2005 film The Island. [1]

Whether or not Tredwell-Owen actually wrote the million-dollar script, however, is a matter of some dispute. A lawsuit, filed in New York by Robert Fiveson, writer/director of the B classic The Clonus Horror, [2] suggested that Tredwell-Owen's script was in fact lifted from Fiveson's sci-fi film, released in 1979. Further, The Island script was stikingly similar to a screenplay previously submitted to Spider-Man producer Avi Arad [3]--Spider-Man producing partner of Ian Bryce, who later produced The Island--entitled Astrocorp, written by screenwriter Luke Shanahan and psychiatrist Dr. Michael Alan Schwartz.

In addition to his The Island credit, Tredwell-Owen is the screenwriter of record of the universally panned Beyond Borders, which Variety's Todd Mccarthy called "high-minded claptrap" and New York Times reviewer Elvis Mitchell likened to "watching someone trying to dry his hands with sandpaper."[4]