During his subsequent years as an independent filmmaker, Davis started putting together an animatic of the script's action scenes using a Wacom tablet and the iMovie app. The animatic, which he made originally as a hobby, became his pitch animation in finding a producer for the project. He sent the script to Don Murphy, a producer he went to film school with at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, and Murphy as well as co-producers Susan Montford and Rick Benattar enjoyed it. Murphy, Montford and Benattar also saw the film's potential as a big-budget production, so they sent the animatic to major film studio New Line Cinema. New Line executives Jeff Katz and Cale Boyter liked it and they passed it on to Toby Emmerich, who greenlit the project at the behest of New Line founder Bob Shaye.