The Ultimatum
In 1990, he and his writing partner Robert Roy Pool sold their spec screenplay "The Ultimatum" for $500,000 against $1,000,000 if a film was made. It was the story of terrorists who plant an atomic bomb in an American city and threaten nuclear devastation unless their demands are met. Steven Spielberg described it as one of the three most exciting scripts he had ever read and was going to direct it, but the script became bogged-down in endless rewrites.