What is 'UMBRA'?

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

NOTE: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS POTENTIAL PLOT SPOILERS FOR A FORTHCOMING MOVIE

"UMBRA" is a Latin word that refers to "a dark area, especially the blackest part of a shadow from which all light is cut off."

"UMBRA" is also a U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) code word used to denote the highest-level compartment of Communications Intelligence (COMINT) - also known as Special Intelligence. Notable in this context is a "Top Secret UMBRA" NSA affidavit dating from October 1980 which gives reasons why certain information relating to UFOs is exempt from disclosure.



Now, UMBRA is to be a Hollywood movie. A paranoid thriller, to be precise, "about a man who finds an old cassette tape which reveals a horrifying secret."

Details of this movie first emerged back in 2009, when Roger Donaldson was attached to direct and Nicholas Cage to star, but budgetary concerns about the production - as well as Cage's numerous other movie commitments at the time - meant that it never really got off the ground.

The movie's original screenplay was written by newcomer Steven Karczynski and was leaked online in June 2009 and reviewed by a handful of bemused amateur critics. The consensus was that an intriguing and gripping conspiracy thriller in the vein of Coppola's The Conversation was torpedoed in its final act by an unexpected sci-fi twist. The screenplay itself is no longer viewable online, but the reviewers' original comments remain, and they confirm what many will already be suspecting: UMBRA is - or, at least, was - a UFO movie.

The script reviewers' comments are not entirely revelatory, but they do tell us that the would-be movie's plot features a "top secret government agency... apparently powerful enough to employ trained killers, track citizens, intercept phone calls and emails, and gain access to private security deposit boxes." The NSA immediately springs to mind, even if it is not explicitly referred to.

One reviewer noted that "the last name of the man who escaped in the script is 'Lazar'" - a possible nod to Bob Lazar, who famously thrust Area 51 into the spotlight in the late-1980s.

The screenplay's ending apparently is ambiguous, but one reviewer speculated that, in the film, "aliens were harvesting humans for their chromosomes or cross-breeding with them or turning them into surrogate wombs 'ALIEN' style."

"I am a little confused," wrote another reviewer, and asked "was the government trying to stop them [the aliens], were they part of it [the conspiracy], or was there little left of the government that wasn't alien?"

Any questions concerning UMBRA's original incarnation are likely to remain open, however, as the script is now being re-written by Joe Carnahan (The A-Team (2010)) who will also direct the movie for Endgame Productions (the film originally was to be produced by Relativity Media). Whether or not the script's alien element will survive its reboot is uncertain and there is no release date for the movie as yet, though it is unlikely to hit cinemas before the end of 2012 as new director Carnahan is currently tied up with another project entitled The Grey (not alien-related).

Intriguingly, UMBRA's original director - Roger Donaldson - worked closely with the Pentagon on the political thriller Thirteen Days, and with the CIA on Agency pet project The Recruit. Donaldson also directed the alien movie Species. While new helmer Joe Carnahan's production history isn't nearly so interesting as Donaldson's, UMBRA - if and when it reaches the big screen - is nevertheless certainly one to watch out for.