After Cloverfield, director Matt Reeves could have had pretty much his pick of projects, but instead of going for something high profile he helmed Let Me In. And it seems he’s following the trend of not using his success to go after high profile, tentpole jobs, as Deadline reports that he will direct an adaptation of the Ray Nelson short story 8 O’Clock in the Morning for Universal Pictures.
Reeves will also write this sci-fi thriller about a man who wakes up one morning to find that alien beings are controlling most aspects of society. If that premise sounds familiar, it’s because John Carpenter based his 1988 cult hit They Live on the same short story (just don’t call it a reboot or a remake, as the filmmakers are keen to point out this is based on the famed story, so aspects of the Carpenter movie, such as the special glasses that allowed people to see the aliens, won’t be used)
Matt Reeves had this to say about taking on the project, “I saw an opportunity to do a movie that was very point-of-view driven, a psychological science fiction thriller that explores this guy’s nightmare. There could be a desperate love story at the center of this. Carpenter took a satirical view of the material and the larger political implication that we’re being controlled. I am very drawn to the emotional side, the nightmare experience with the paranoia of Invasion of the Body Snatchers or a Roman Polanski-style film.”
As for the long promised Cloverfield sequel, apparently it’s still on the drawing board and If we crack a story we all love, well do it, but it doesn’t sound like we should expect it any time soon.