EXCLUSIVE: 20th/Hulu are moving forward with The Boogeyman, a two hour film based on the Stephen King short story. Production will be this winter/spring in New Orleans. Rob Savage (Host and Dashcam) is set to direct. 21 Laps’ Shawn Levy, Dan Levine & Dan Cohen are producing.
Mark Heyman (Black Swan) has been writing the script which Scott Beck & Bryan Woods (A Quiet Place) and Akela Cooper (Malignant) wrote the original drafts. It was originally developed by 21 Laps as a Fox film and now will find new life through Hulu. They’ll begin prep and casting quickly to start early next year.
The Boogeyman was first published in 1978 as part of The Night Shift collection of short stories that King wrote over the years for magazines. It was collected in a bestselling anthology and published the year after The Shining became a huge bestseller for the author. This will be the tenth short story in the 20-story collection to be turned either into a feature film or TV movie. Among the others are Children of the Corn, Maximum Overdrive, The Mangler and Sometimes They Come Back.
The original short was truly scary, and dealt with a man’s visit to a psychiatrist where he recounted how his children were each killed by a sadistic presence, the title character. Here is the logline for the film: 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 most recently directed the Blumhouse thriller Dashcam, which premiered at Toronto, and recently played the London Film Festival & Sitges.
21 Laps currently has Free Guy in theaters after the film grossed $330 million worldwide. Levy’s reteam with Ryan Reynolds, The Adam Project, is in post at Netflix. The streamer just released the 21 Laps produced There’s Someone Inside Your House, and they have Stranger Things Season 4 in post for a 2022 release, and Shadow & Bone gearing up for a second season.
King is repped by Rand Holston Management and Gang Tyre; Savage is repped at WME, Exile Management & Independent Talent and Jackoway Austen; 21 Laps is WME & Ziffren/Brittenham.