Oscar-Winner Daniel Roher to Direct 'Paradox Inc.' for Universal, With Lord Miller Producing
Universal Pictures has set a feature film adaptation of Forrest Brazeal's debut novel Paradox Inc., with Oscar-winning director Daniel Roher attached to direct and Lord Miller producing, according to Deadline.
The deal pulls together a striking roster of talent. Roher, who won the Academy Award for his 2022 documentary Navalny, will co-write a treatment with Matthew Robinson. Robinson then adapts the screenplay. Chris Miller and Phil Lord produce through Lord Miller's first-look deal with Universal — a deal structure giving the studio first right of refusal on the pair's projects. Lucy Kitada and Aditya Sood also produce for Lord Miller, with Brazeal himself serving as executive producer. Universal's Senior Vice President of Production Development Ryan Jones and Director of Production Development Christine Sun will oversee the project for the studio (Deadline).
Paradox Inc. is a Silicon Valley satire built around a high-stakes race: a scrappy startup and a dysfunctional Big Tech giant competing to build the world's first consumer time machine. People magazine, which exclusively revealed the novel's cover in April 2026, described it as chronicling the fall and rise of a time-travel startup (People). Brazeal himself called it "my ridiculous novel about the Silicon Valley time travel bubble" when he opened pre-orders in his newsletter. Penguin Random House imprint Ballantine Books will publish the novel on January 19, 2027 (Deadline).
Brazeal brings insider credentials to the premise. He worked at Google during the peak of the AI and crypto booms and later co-founded the technology marketing company Freeman & Forrest.
For Roher, the project continues a rapid pivot from documentary into narrative filmmaking. His first narrative feature, the crime thriller Tuner starring Dustin Hoffman, Leo Woodall and Havana Rose Liu, was released in May. He directed the Focus Features documentary The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, produced by Daniel Kwan and Jonathan Wang. He is also in post-production on Positano, a Netflix caper produced by Working Title and starring Matthew McConaughey and Zoe Saldaña.
Lord Miller, meanwhile, arrive at the project on a commercial hot streak. Their Project Hail Mary became Amazon MGM Studios' highest-grossing film to date with a $684 million worldwide release. Their Spider-Noir series for MGM+ and Prime Video has collected 11 Emmy nominations. And Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse, the third film in the Spider-Verse series, is dated for June 2027.
No production start or release date has been announced for Paradox Inc.
