Mama Director Helming Post-Apocalyptic Thriller, Bird Box
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Andy Muschietti scored some serious points in Hollywood this past January when his horror film Mama, which was produced on a relatively small budget of $15 million, raked in nearly $100 million at the box office worldwide. Given the surprise success, you can bet Universal will try to squeeze out some sequels, but in the meantime, the studio is talking to him about an adaptation of the upcoming post-apocalyptic novel Bird Box.
Josh Malerman, the front man for Detroit garage rock band The High Strung, penned the book. Last summer, Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins, picked up the North American rights for Bird Box for six figures—a sizable amount in the current publishing landscape—and plans to release the title in 2014.
Earning comparisons to both Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men and Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others — good company to be in — Bird Box tells the story of “a blindfolded threesome comprised of a woman and two children who make their way down a river in a seemingly postapocalyptic setting.” Why this trio is blindfolded, and why they don’t simply remove these impediments, remains to be seen. But we’ll get to that.
The project is in the process of looking for writers to handle the adaptation. Bird Box will also re-team Muschietti with his sister, Mama co-producer Barbara Muschietti. Though the siblings worked on the Mama script together, there is no word whether or not they’ll have any influence on the story or a hand in writing the screenplay.
