As reported by Fangoria, Brea Grant and Ed Dougherty have optioned the rights to the horror novella The Atrocities, by Jeremy C. Shipp, as the first move as part of their newly launched joint venture, Squirrel Park.
“I have been a fan of Jeremy’s work for a number of years and am excited to bring this new take on the Gothic novel to life on screen,” says Grant. “I immediately knew this was the perfect project to collaborate on. It has one of the greatest all time premises I’ve ever seen in a horror novel and I think it’ll make an unforgettable film,” continues Dougherty.
Shipp calls The Atrocities his love letter to the Gothic genre, adding “my goal when writing the book was to create a modern-day ghost story that utilizes certain tropes of the genre while simultaneously turning these devices on their head. I wanted to explore the dissonance created by colliding the supernatural and the rational, the modern and the archaic. I also wanted to construct a nightmarescape of a house that’s both grotesquely beautiful and beautifully grotesque.”
Grant is set to direct while she and Dougherty will co-write the big-screen adaptation.
The book follows Danna, a modern-day governess who works for the elite and is summoned to Stockton House to tutor a young girl named Isabella Evers. Upon arriving, she realizes her new charge has already passed away, but the girl’s parents insist her ghost is in need of an education.
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