Deadline are reporting that Rob Savage – the British director of horror movies Host and Dashcam – has been attached to the latest Stephen King adaptation for Hulu, The Boogeyman. It will be a two-hour film based on the short story, first published in 1978.
The Boogeyman has been through several writers, all with horror pedigree, including Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (A Quiet Place), Akela Cooper (Malignant) and now Mark Heyman (Black Swan). It was originally developed by 21 Laps as a Fox film, but has now found a new home at US streaming service Hulu – which made two seasons of Castle Rock, based on various characters from Stephen King IP.
Production is set to start in winter 2021, through to spring 2022, in New Orleans. The Boogeyman is part of a series of short stories that King wrote over the course of several years for magazines. Once The Shining became a breakout hit, the stories were collected and published in an anthology called The Night Shift. Children of the Corn was part of the same collection.
Stephen King’s The Boogeyman is a truly scary short story and features a man telling his psychiatrist how his children were killed by a ‘sadistic presence’ – the boogeyman of the title. The logline of the film is; “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.”
Rob Savage’s Host was a surprise sleeper hit that came out of the 2020 lockdown. It’s a horror movie that takes place entirely over Zoom. He recently directed the Blumhouse thriller Dashcam, which was shown at Toronto and London film festivals.
Production company 21 Laps has had a recent hit with Ryan Reynolds’ comedy Free Guy. They are also gearing up for Stranger Things season 4 and Shadow and Bone season 2.