Terence Winter, whose credits include ‘Boardwalk Empire’ and ‘Tulsa King’, is developing a TV series based on ‘Out of the Shadows’, the forthcoming memoir of former US intelligence official Jay Stratton. It has the makings of a government thriller, although Stratton says some of its strangest moments happened after he went home for the day.
Stratton was Chief of Air & Space Warfare in the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Defense Warning Office, where he specialised in emerging aerospace technology and became involved in investigating unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs. That is the current official term for the sightings most of us still call UFOs.
According to Stratton, his work became so highly classified that he could not tell his wife and children what he believed he had learned. “I had to live a double life,” he said. He also claims that UAP activity and encounters with non-human intelligent life eventually reached his family home, where his wife and children witnessed events themselves.
Those are Stratton’s claims, and the series is being developed from his account. As material for a drama, though, the divide between his classified work and family life gives Winter plenty to explore: a man investigating something extraordinary while being unable to explain to the people closest to him why he is behaving differently. Then, by Stratton’s telling, the boundary between those two lives disappears.
Winter has partnered with Dan Farah, who acquired the film and television rights to the memoir. Farah directed and produced the UAP documentary ‘The Age of Disclosure’, so he is already familiar with Stratton’s world. Winter will executive produce the adaptation through his Cold Front Productions.
Winter has mentioned ‘Homeland’ and ‘The Americans’, as well as films including ‘The Hunt for Red October’, ‘All the President’s Men’ and ‘Spotlight’, when discussing the stories that came to mind for this project. That is an intriguing set of reference points: espionage, secrecy and the difficult business of finding out what people in power know. He described Stratton’s story as “a riveting journey into a world the public knows little about.”
There is no word yet on which parts of the memoir the series might cover, or how it will handle the events Stratton says took place at his home. No cast or broadcaster has been announced either, so it is still early days for the project.
‘Out of the Shadows’ is due to be published in the US by William Morrow in October. The TV adaptation has no announced UK broadcaster or premiere date.
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