He eventually returned to the United States and moved to Los Angeles, where he attended the USC School of Cinematic Arts for three years, earning a master's degree and writing and directing the award-winning short film Perfect Alibi.
Almost four years later, broke and in danger of having his house repossessed,[3] he wrote and directed an adaptation of Mark Twain's classic The Adventures of Huck Finn for Walt Disney Pictures, as well as Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book.
He later wrote the screenplays for Gunmen and Tom and Huck, which he also executive produced for Disney (along with a TV version of Oliver Twist in 1997 starring Richard Dreyfuss and Elijah Wood), and worked as a staff writer at Hollywood Pictures.
In 2004, Sommers founded his own company (along with editor/producing partner Bob Ducsay), The Sommers Company, and returned to theater screens with Van Helsing, a film pitting legendary vampire hunter Gabriel Van Helsing against the triumvirate of Universal movie monsters: Count Dracula, The Wolf Man, and Frankenstein's monster.
Before Van Helsing even premiered, Sommers and Ducsay began developing a spin-off TV series for NBC called Transylvania.
He was also attached to a remake of When Worlds Collide (to be executive produced by Steven Spielberg),[5] a new big-screen adaptation of Flash Gordon,[6] a swashbuckling adventure film called Airborn based on the novel by Kenneth Oppel,[7] a romantic/adventure story called The Big Love based on the novel by Sarah Dunn,[6] and a remake of the French film Les Victimes.