Here are some quick updates on some of today’s smaller bits of movie news…
Sony has announced that they’ve bought the rights to Jeff Somers series of sci-fi novels, with Trevor Sands hired to adapt the first book, The Electric Church, for the screen. The book are set in a near future where Earth is run by a federation of nations and governed by a council. Avery Cates is a bodyguard-assassin who, in ‘Church’, is forced by the governing police force to kill the founder of a church that converts people by transplanting their brains into pliant robotic bodies. The film is currently going under the title, The Avery Cates Project, but expect that to change. (Source: Heat Vision)
Jason Blum, Oren Peli and Steven Schneider, AKA the guys behind Paranormal Activity, are teaming up with Saw director James Wan for The Further. The film tells the story of a family who discover that the body of their comatose young son has become a magnet for malevolent, supernatural entities, while his consiciousness is trapped in a realm called The Further. The project is apparently in its early stage and it’s not known if it’ll be the next film for Wan. (Source: Shock Til You Drop)
John and Drew Dowdle (Quarantine) are planning an adaptation of Jack Kilborn’s novel, Afraid. In the book, a group of red-ops fighters – psychotic torturers with modified brains and extensive training in killing anyone in their way – are wrongly sent on a mission into a sleepy Wisconsin town. The army sends in teams of soldiers to stop them, and the townsfolk must also band together to fight off the terrifying force. Larry Malkin and Chad Thumann are handling the script. (Source: Production Weekly)
Derick Martini (Lymelife) will be direction 31 Days Of Larry for Lionsgate. The dark romantic comedy revolves around a woman in desperate need of money and a depressed man, Larry, who has trouble killing himself. The two concoct a plan to get married so the man gets help committing suicide and the woman receives the life-insurance payout. There’s no cast announced at yet (Source: THR)
The man who wrote Alexander, Christopher Kyle, has signed up to adapt Jon Land’s novel, The Seven Sins: The Tyrant Ascending, for the big screen. The action thriller centres on Michael ‘The Tyrant’ Tiranno, adopted son of an Italian crime lord called upon to defend the gambling mecca from terrorist attacks. The Tyrant Ascending is said to be the first in a series of James Bond-style adventures, which suggest the people behind the film smell a franchise. As yet no studio is attached. (Source: THR)