A Development Studio — Los Angeles
Cro-Magnon develops original science fiction intellectual property for film, television, and publishing — pitch-ready assets built to provoke, endure, and invite development at every scale.
The Studio
J. Speakman
Founder — Cro-MagnonJ. Speakman founded Cro-Magnon on a background in UX design, AI systems, speculative writing, and app development — treating a concept as a system, designed and stress-tested before it's ever pitched.
He also created Future Human Hypothesis, an independent research studio and publication examining the long-term trajectory of intelligence — human, artificial, and whatever emerges between them. It exists to ask the structural questions most commentary skips in favor of the immediate. Cro-Magnon is that inquiry given narrative form.
A solo studio by design. Lean, focused, and built around a single conviction: that the most valuable thing in any development conversation is a concept that is already done.
Every project arrives complete — treatment, world bible, character studies, dossiers. No discovery process. No development overhead. A producer or showrunner who options a Cro-Magnon project receives a full creative foundation ready to move.
The studio develops original speculative fiction for film, television, and limited series. Five worlds are currently in development. The format serves the story — not the other way around.
We are not building backdrops. We are building systems.
Current Slate
A grieving evolutionary biologist begins receiving contact from a post-biological, far-future branch of humanity — one that can only survive if she chooses to leave her own timeline, and the husband she is already losing, behind.
Complete manuscript (47,746 words), treatment & world bibleIn a near future where death is no longer inevitable, a couple must decide whether love is something to preserve forever — or something that only matters because it ends.
Active world in developmentHumanity's far-future descendants already exist — not hypothetical, not speculative, observable. They do not intervene. They watch. The future is real, and it is watching.
World dossier completeA deep-ocean experiment reveals structures that respond not to physical stimuli, but to human interpretation — implying a parallel evolutionary pathway shaped by compression rather than expansion.
World dossier completeA major city loses power for exactly seventy-three minutes. No storm. No attack. No explanation. When the lights return, millions of people remember events that cannot be verified — and every account is internally consistent, emotionally true, and physically impossible.
Full series architecture complete — writer-ready packageThe next concept is already in motion. Full details on request.
Early-stagePhilosophy
No spectacle over psychology. The catastrophe lives in the character. The tension is internal. Destruction is the least interesting thing that can happen.
No franchise logic. Every world is built to end. Deliberate terminality is not a limitation — it is the source of meaning. These stories resolve. They do not expand.
No alien invasion tropes. The most unsettling contact is patient, non-coercive, and entirely human. If it invades, it is already less interesting than it could be.
No perfection paralysis. Development moves. Assets are produced. The world bible exists before the treatment, the treatment before the script.
No explanatory crutches. The audience is capable. If the concept requires a monologue to be understood, the concept is underdeveloped. Restraint is intelligence.
"The most valuable thing in any development conversation is a concept that is already done."
Get in Touch
Submit a brief description of your project or inquiry. We'll evaluate it through the Cro-Magnon lens — identifying thematic alignment, developmental potential, and next steps.
Enquiries & Rights
jay@cromagnon.studio
