A highly competitive bidding war has ended with New Line Cinema paying a whopping six figures in an outright buy for Victor Sweetser’s new horror short story, Occupant. Barbarian’s director Zach Cregger, Vertigo’s Roy Lee, and Ground Control’s Scott Glassgold are on board to produce.
With the short story only on the market for less than a day, a large amount of interest was generated for what is described as a reinvention of the haunted house movie. The story attracted many interested buyers, and the Lee and Cregger of Barbarian team merged with Glassgold, who created the project with the author. Cregger and Lee were recently the subjects of a heated auction for Weapons, which Cregger has written and will direct. He’s also producing Companion for New Line, and both those films are green-lit. No plot details are now known except the promise to reinvent the haunted house genre.
According to Deadline, “Occupant marks the company’s sixth recent short story sale, including My Wife & I Bought a Range, We Used to Live Here to Netflix, Caretaker to Universal, I Think My Mother-In-Law Is Trying to Kill Me to Sony’s 3000 and Wilderness Reform to Paramount. All of these deals were done in partnership with Verve Talent Agency. “
Glassgold finished production on the upcoming Spenser Cohen & Anna Halberg movie, Horrorscope, for Sony’s Screen Gems. For those interested in Sweetsters work, Horrorscope tells the story of a group of college friends dying in ways connected to their fortunes after getting their horoscopes to read.
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