Largo Entertainment

His other influences included the works of H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Wise's The Haunting from 1963, Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey, Ridley Scott's Alien, the tabletop game Warhammer 40,000 and Stephen Hawking's book A Brief History of Time.

Eisner first pitched the concept verbally to producers Lawrence Gordon and Lloyd Levin of Largo Entertainment, describing it as a haunted house story in space.

Gordon responded favourably and encouraged him to develop a full screenplay.

Eisner began writing in spring 1992, and for first-time screenwriter Eisner, it should have been an exciting process, but it was hampered almost immediately.

He delivered the initial version of the script by October.

Gordon and Levin commissioned the project and advanced it in partnership with Paramount Pictures.

Lawrence Gordon retained ownership of the material and so when he left Largo Entertainment, he took the Event Horizon script with him and with it formed a new production company in 1994, Golar Productions.

Lawrence Gordon shopped the Event Horizon script around Hollywood and unsurprisingly an R-rated horror sci-fi was a hard sell.