HBO Lands Hot Drama Spec ‘Imposter’ By DWA Assistant Kalos Chu With Lauren LeFranc Producing

From an assistant desk to a premium HBO development deal: thousands of aspiring writers dream of making that leap. For one, Kalos Chu — who serendipitously works at DreamWorks Animation — that dream became a reality.

After a bidding war for his spec Imposter, which started with 10 offers before the field was narrowed down to a three-way battle between HBO, Netflix and Amazon, the drama project landed at HBO for development.

The Penguin creator/showrunner Lauren LeFranc will executive produce via her banner Acid and Tender Productions under her overall deal at HBO, with her head of TV and fill Rachel Jacobs also exec producing.

Written and executive produced by Chu, Imposter is a dark mystery that follows an outsider entering his freshman year at an elite university.

This is the first writing credit for Chu, a 2023 Harvard graduate with a BA degree in English.

“After graduation, I hope to pursue a career in screenwriting — a passion that has developed, in large part, due to my experience in the English department,” he wrote in a 2023 essay about his college tenure.

While Imposter makes Chu’s Hollywood writing debut, he had been preparing for it for years. Starting in fall 2020, Chu did a string of stints as a development intern, at Atlas Entertainment, Voltage Pictures, Day Zero Productions, Nickelodeon Animation and DreamWorks Animation. In summer 2022, he interned in physical production at Lucasfilm, to, as he put it in the 2023 essay, address gaps in his filmmaking knowledge of how, exactly, a movie is made and “the practical constraints that screenwriters must grapple with.”

A year after graduation, Chu got a job as a feature development assistant at DreamWorks Animation where he has been for the past two years, writing Imposter in his spare time.

With the script selling, Chu will be leaving his DWA job and is currently helping find a replacement. As of now, he doesn’t have an agent; Chu is repped by Untitled and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller. That will likely change soon, too.