After securing a three-picture deal with Blumhouse in 2020, the first of which - Dashcam - released to a fiery response at TIFF this year, Rob Savage has ticked off another item on the bloodied bucket list. Per Deadline, Savage will be making The Boogeyman, a film based on Stephen King's short story.
The film's logline is as follows: "Still reeling from the tragic death of their mother, a teenage girl and her little brother find themselves plagued by a sadistic presence in their house and struggle to get their grieving father to pay attention before it’s too late." A tragic familial death? Beleaguered adolescents? An enigmatic, generally evil "presence"? Yep, sounds like King.
Per Deadline, Black Swan's Mark Heyman has been writing the script based on original drafts from Scott Beck & Bryan Woods (A Quiet Place) and Akela Cooper (Malignant). Originally developed as a Fox film, it will now release via Hulu, with prep and casting to start early next year.
King's original text was published in 1978 in The Night Shift, an anthology of short stories he had written for magazines. Other titles within the collection to have been adapted to the silver screen include Children of the Corn, Maximum Overdrive, The Mangler, and Sometimes They Come Back. It was adapted into a short film by Jeff C. Schiro in 1982; since, it has been performed at the Edinburgh Fringe theatre festival as a full-length play, and another 27-minute movie in 2010, by Irish filmmaker Gerard Lough.
It's a big coup for Savage, who rose to prominence almost overnight with 2020's Host, the first horror film shot entirely over Zoom. Dashcam was similarly formally adventurous, shot exclusively from the perspective of the protagonist's iPhone or, funnily enough, the dashcam in her car. Reviews were mixed, but one thing's for sure: Savage's stock has risen fast. There is currently no release date for The Boogeyman.