Michigan screenwriter's COVID experience inspired script for sci-fi thriller 'The Gorge'

Yahoo

12-02-2025

With the world locked down by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, screenwriter Zach Dean sketched an idea involving isolation and separation that became 'The Gorge.'
'I literally drew the gorge on a dry erase board. I drew fog on the bottom. And I drew a tower on one side and a tower on the other side,' he recalls. 'I put a little male symbol here and a little female symbol over there. And I wrote: 'They're snipers. It's a love story.' Then I had a drink and I went to bed.'
Sometimes, a quick drawing and a few notes can lead to a major movie. Arriving Friday on Apple TV+, 'The Gorge' is directed by Scott Derrickson and stars Miles Teller ('Top Gun Maverick') and Anya Taylor-Joy ('Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga') as two expert sharpshooters, Levi and Drasa, who are stationed on opposite sides of a vast, mysterious canyon.
Their top-secret assignment, carried out in separate towers, is to guard whatever terrifying, occasionally screaming evil is hiding in the densely foggy depths of the gorge. But though they are kept apart by geography, Levi and Drasa begin to fall for each other with the help of binoculars and conversations written on large sheets of paper. Their efforts to be together eventually lead them to confront an existential threat to human survival, a force so deadly that they must defeat it if they — and people everywhere — are going to have a chance at a future.
"The Gorge," co-starring Sigourney Weaver as the powerful figure who recruits Levi for the task, is a thriller that combines elements of various film genres (romance, sci-fi, action-adventure) as it unravels what's really behind Levi and Drasa's mission.
It is one of many stories that Dean, who was born and raised in northern Michigan, has written on a journey that has taken him from doing odd jobs to working on some of the best-known films of the past few years.
Dean's early credits as a screenwriter include 2012's 'Deadfall,' which starred Eric Bana, Olivia Wilde and Charlie Hunnam in a crime drama about siblings in the aftermath of a botched casino heist, and 2017's '24 Hours to Live,' with Ethan Hawke as an assassin who seeks revenge and redemption.
Dean experienced a game-changer with his screenplay for the popular sci-fi flick 'The Tomorrow War.' The project featuring Chris Pratt and a story about soldiers and civilians transported to the future to fight space invaders proved to be a huge success for Amazon Prime Video, which released it on July 2, 2021, while the COVID-19 pandemic was still impacting movie theaters.
Dean also worked on the story for 2023's 'Fast X' and is working now on the eagerly awaited next project in the "Fast & Furious" franchise.
Speaking by phone from Beverly Hills, California, Dean says he is grateful for the opportunities he continues to have to fulfill what has been a lifelong dream. Born in Traverse City and raised a short drive from there near Interlochen around Green Lake, he is the son of two former teachers at the Interlochen Arts Academy. His father was a history instructor, while his mother taught visual arts, in particular weaving.
Dean says he always wanted to tell stories and 'because I was a faculty kid, even when I was little, 8, 9, 10 years old, I would go to the readings — short story readings, poetry readings.'
He especially recalls an event with author and noted Interlochen faculty member (and Dean's eventual teacher) Jack Driscoll, who died in 2024. 'I remember being little and having him read short stories and I was, like, 'That's what I want to do,'" he says.
Dean was a student at many Interlochen summer camps and went to high school at the Interlochen Arts Academy, where he is a 1992 alum. Along with writing, he grew up loving all sorts of movies, especially those with heroic storylines. 'Movies and stories ... they kind of saved me when I was a kid, and they made me feel like I was less alone,' he explains.
After high school, Dean attended various colleges, including Western Michigan University, Northwestern Michigan College and Washtenaw Community College, where he earned an associate's degree in general studies.
Through his early years, he held down various odd jobs. 'I worked in Ann Arbor as a bartender for years," says Dean, citing locations like Full Moon and the old One-Eyed Moose. He also was a dealer at tribal casinos in northern Michigan, built houses for a while and eventually became a teacher.
Regardless of whatever else he was doing, writing remained a constant. 'I always wrote. That was my process. That's how I felt OK in life is to write stories,' says Dean.
When he was about 20, his then-girlfriend and now 'awesome wife" who is a University of Michigan alum, came home with 'The Screenwriter's Bible: A Complete Guide to Writing, Formatting, and Selling Your Script,' a well-known guide by David Trottier.
'She was like, 'You should try writing one of these,'' he says.
Eventually, all that writing opened several doors. Dean says he got a scholarship to go to film school in Chicago. In 2005, he earned a master's degree from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Seven years later, his first film, 'Deadfall,' was released.
Dean says persistence was a huge help to his career. 'I certainly learned that you just have to keep hustling all the time; you have to keep creating.'
For him, writing stories comes with its own rewards. 'Whether you sell them or not, the process of creating them has such incredible value to me," he says. "It helps me process my fear, my anxieties, my uncertainties, my hopes, all that stuff. … If we end up selling it, if we end up making it, that's the bonus.'
Dean compares screenwriting to farming. 'It's agricultural, almost. It's like, you never know what's going to grow, and you're sure that one is going to blossom, and then it dies. And then you were sure it was dead, but then it pops up two years later. You have to love the process and do it a lot.'
When 'The Tomorrow War' arrived in 2021, Dean got a pandemic-era lesson in how streaming can reach millions of people around the globe. 'It was huge. It went out Fourth of July weekend in 2021 when nobody could go to the theaters still. And it reached so many audiences. It kind of brought back a sense of the summer at a time when we hadn't had a summer in a couple of years because it was so difficult.'
During the COVID-19 lockdown, Dean focused on writing from April to September in 2020, a period when nobody in the film industry knew exactly when they'd be able to make movies again. He ended up doing three screenplays in the six-month period. 'The Gorge' was the second one.
'As I was getting done writing the first one, I started getting really anxious because I didn't want to stop,' he says. 'I was in such a good rhythm, I was riding a wave. I was afraid if I took even a break for a week, I was going to lose it.'
For Dean, writing provided a sense of control during a time of much uncertainty and a way to deal with the emotions of the moment.
At the time, he was living in Santa Barbara, California, and using his RV for his office. After sketching out the concept for 'The Gorge,' he stared at what he'd drawn the next morning and decided that it indeed made sense.
"The Gorge" is about what Dean calls 'two people who don't really have anybody in the world that understands them ... but they find someone that might actually get them, who might actually be their soul mate. And they're across this gorge. But they can't get near each other, which was all of us then.'
Levi and Drasa's situation reflects some of the pandemic realities of 2020, including not being able to travel or see loved ones. At the time, Dean says, 'Love vs. the unknown was a thing that was really resonant with me."
Dean says that the film's central romance helps deepen the adventures and dangers that ensue because it gives time for the audience to understand that Levi and Drasa ultimately are in this together. For example, when an accident puts Levi in grave danger, Drasa follows to rescue him, a choice that Dean says 'you don't doubt for a second" given the strength of their feelings.
According to Dean, he was thrilled with the casting of Teller and Taylor-Joy as the lead characters. 'I love them! I love them! They were the best Draa and Levi. I couldn't have cast it better. I was blown away when we got them.'
Right now, he's busy with several projects, including 'Day Drinker,' one of the scripts he wrote in 2020. It's expected to begin filming in a few months in Spain with Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz.
Dean says he still goes home to northern Michigan as much as possible. He has a home on the beach near Frankfort, and his parents, now divorced, still live in the area.
Talking about being in Michigan, he describes the lines of traffic on U.S. 31 that form in warm weather months outside of the Cherry Bowl drive-in theater, the historic site in Honor that opened in 1953.
'The Cherry Bowl is full on a weekend night,' says Dean, the boy who grew up nearby wanting to tell stories to the world, a dream that he now is achieving.
Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at [e-mail].
Arrives Friday on AppleTV+
Rated PG-13; action and violence, language, suggestive material, thematic elements
2 hours, 7 minutes
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 'The Gorge' from Michigan screenwriter Zach Dean coming to Apple TV+