The Sopranos writer is making a TV series about US government UFO cover-ups
A Sopranos writer is swapping mobsters for mysteries, developing a TV adaptation of a former intelligence official’s memoir on alleged US government UFO investigations.
Here's a twist I didn't have on my TV bingo card: one of The Sopranos key scribes is now aiming his pen at flying saucers. Terence Winter, a man who once gave us mobsters agonising about ducks, is working up a TV adaptation that digs into the US government's secretive (and, let's be honest, pretty weird) side—namely, their involvement with UFOs, or as they're now fashionably called, UAPs.
From Jersey to UFOs
The source material here is Out of the Shadows, a not-yet-released memoir by Jay Stratton. If you don't know the name, Stratton's a genuine former intelligence official, the sort who'd give a Bond villain nightmares. Before he started chasing strange blips on radar, he was Chief of Air & Space Warfare in the Defense Warning Office under the Defense Intelligence Agency. That’s already a job title with enough classified spices to keep a screenwriter busy for years. Stratton got his start on secret tech and led programs with names like the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (that’s AAWSAP if you’re collecting acronyms), before heading up the official Pentagon task force on UFOs—sorry, UAPs.
Winter, not lacking for pedigree (this is the same bloke who ran Tulsa King and, just to flex, got an Oscar nomination for scripting The Wolf of Wall Street), will serve as executive producer through his own Cold Front Productions. The real engine here is Dan Farah: a producer who’s previously worked on Ready Player One and now has the rights to Stratton’s memoir under his Farah Films label. Farah’s directing and producing past includes a UFO documentary called The Age of Disclosure.
Speaking in the official announcement, Winter put it like this: 'For all of human history, mankind has wondered whether we are the only intelligent life in the universe. Jay Stratton’s shocking true story answers that question and more as it delves into the world of the U.S. Government’s investigation of UAP and non-human intelligent life. It’s a riveting journey into a world the public knows little about.'
The Memoir's Big Reveal
The upcoming series will draw from Stratton’s own account of his time inside the bureaucracy, chasing what the rest of us would call flying saucers. If you want to read his version first, Out of the Shadows gets a US release on 13 October from HarperCollins imprint William Morrow.
Producer Dan Farah called it: '“Out of the Shadows” has the propulsive storytelling of a high-stakes political thriller,' promising the series will also deal with how Stratton’s shadowy work bled into his personal and family life.
There’s no word yet on the series’ eventual cast, where it’ll land, or when you can stream it. But with the people involved and the material at hand, don't be surprised if this goes beyond your standard tinfoil-hat fare and lands somewhere genuinely fascinating.
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