Host director Rob Savage is set to adapt Stephen King's short story The Boogeyman for Hulu and 20th Century Studios.
According to Deadline, The Boogeyman adaptation was originally developed by 21 Laps as a Fox film but has since shifted to Hulu for distribution. Now that things are moving forward again, production on the two-hour feature film is expected to begin either this winter or next spring in New Orleans, though the project does not yet have a release date.
Once the cameras start rolling, Savage will be in the director's seat, with 21 Laps' Shawn Levy, Dan Levine and Dan Cohen producing. They'll be working from a script written by Black Swan's Mark Heyman, based on original drafts by Akela Cooper together with A Quiet Place duo Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who are both also executive producing the project.
The Boogeyman was first published in an issue of Cavalier magazine in 1973, before making its way into Stephen King's Night Shift collection in 1978 alongside several of his other short stories. The Boogeyman centers around a man's visit to a psychiatrist's office where he recounts the gruesome ways in which his wife and children were killed by a sadistic presence.
The upcoming film adaptation seems to be taking a slightly different approach to the story, with the official logline reading 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."
Savage became one of the most talked-about directors in the horror world last year following the release of Host. He returned this year with the Blumhouse thriller Dashcam, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. IGN's review of Dashcam called it "sloppy, soulless, and sickening" in comparison to 2020's Zoom-based horror hit.
Thumbnail image credit: Doubleday Publishing
Adele Ankers is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.
