LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Twenty years later, screenwriter Michael Schiffer is heading back down the rough-and-tumble halls of high school.
In 1989, Schiffer's screenplay for "Lean on Me" became a Warner Bros. drama that starred Morgan Freeman as real-life, hard-nosed New Jersey high school principal Joe Clark. Now Schiffer has sold his pitch "Speed Boyz" to Alcon Entertainment, and it concerns real-life engineer-turned-teacher Simon Hauger, who inspired a group of troubled Philadelphia high schoolers to win a competition to build an alternative-fuel vehicle.
The pitch sale was in the mid-six-figure range.
Hauger, a math teacher, launched an unorthodox curriculum in 1998 to improve students' performance in math and science. The kids went on to win the annual Tour de Sol -- a national green car competition -- where they beat teams from top universities with their electric cars.
They are now competing for the $10 million Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize. All they have to do is build a really fast vehicle that gets 100 miles per gallon and cuts the standard car's carbon emissions in half while devising a business plan that can manufacture 10,000 autos per year by 2014.
Schiffer also wrote the screenplays for "Colors," "Crimson Tide" and "The Peacemaker."
(Editing by SheriLinden at Reuters)
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