Screenwriter Jason Keller has been hired to come aboard director Matt Reeves’ (Let Me In) adaptation of Justin Cronin’s novel The Passage. The film was originally to be directed by Ridley Scott, with a script by John Logan, but Reeves boarded the project in April and decided he would oversee a rewrite. The story takes place in the future, where a government attempt to cure cancer has turned people into vampires.Heat Vision reports that Keller will perform the rewrite for the flick, which is the first in a proposed trilogy. The screenwriter recently penned Marc Forster’s upcoming Machine Gun Preacher, as well as Relativity’s untitled Snow White project (the one with Julia Roberts). Hit the jump to read a synopsis of Cornin’s novel.Here’s the synopsis for The Passage:

An epic and gripping tale of catastrophe and survival, The Passage is the story of Amy—abandoned by her mother at the age of six, pursued and then imprisoned by the shadowy figures behind a government experiment of apocalyptic proportions. But Special Agent Brad Wolgast, the lawman sent to track her down, is disarmed by the curiously quiet girl—and risks everything to save her. As the experiment goes nightmarishly wrong, Wolgast secures her escape—but he can’t stop society’s collapse. And as Amy walks alone, across miles and decades, into a future dark with violence and despair, she is filled with the mysterious and terrifying knowledge that only she has the power to save the ruined world. [Amazon]

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