Horrorstör has a new lease on Hollywood.
Searchlight Pictures has picked up the rights to the comedic horror novel by Grady Hendrix, which has been in development both as a film and series since being published in 2014.
Jonathan Levine, who of late has been directing and exec producing buzzy shows Tell Me Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers, is writing and will helm the adaptation.
Producing will be Brian Oliver of New Republic, Gillian Bohrer of Megamix, Adam Goldworm of Aperture Entertainment and Brad Fischer.
The book, Hendrix’s third published novel, told an Ikea-like furniture superstore named Orsk in Cleveland that becomes subjected to supernatural occurrences. To uncover the mystery, a group of employees sign up for a night shift, only to get way more than they bargained for, in a most sinister way.
Hendrix, who saw his horror novel My Best Friend’s Exorcism be adapted as a feature by Amazon, will exec produce, along with Quirk Books .
The book was initially headed to the small screen via Fox who had Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich) and The O.C. creator Josh Scwhartz as executive producers. When that stalled, Horrorstör landed at New Republic as a movie project.
VP of production Richard Ruiz and production executive Apolline Berty are overseeing the project for Searchlight Pictures, reporting to heads of production and development DanTram Nguyen and Katie Goodson-Thomas.
New Republic’s recent output has included animated feature Transformers One and the live-action Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, as well as Michael Bay action movie Ambulance, which was produced with Fischer.
Goldworm is producing Hannibal at Netflix with Denzel Washington attached to star and Antoine Fuqua directing and Alpha at Netflix with Taron Egerton starring.
Levine is known for his ability to straddle genres with great agility. He’s traipsed in horror and horror romance with All the Boys Love Mandy Lane and Warm Bodies, trafficked in coming-of-age stoner dramedy with Sundance hit The Wackness, and traded in dramatic emotion and laughs in the cancer comedy 50/50. His last feature was the Seth Rogen-Charlize Theron comedy Long Shot.
While he has been spending time in the TV series sphere, he is returning to movies later this year with Mr. Irrelevant, a true life football drama starring David Corenswet that will be released December.
Levine is repped by WME and Goodman Genow.