With the success of pandemic Zoom chiller Host and the upcoming DASHCAM generating buzz thanks to festival screenings, it was only a matter of time before others came knocking at the door of writer/director Rob Savage. He's now aboard to direct the adaptation of Stephen King's The Boogeyman.
King's tale originally appeared in a March 1973 issue of Cavalier magazine before it was collected in his 1978 collection Night Shift. The story follows a man named Lester Billings who becomes convinced that a nightmarish creature has been creeping from his kids' bedroom closets to kill them. While he's worried that he might be going crazy, and he consults a psychiatrist, Billings' terror continues. The story has long been one of his works that King has allowed filmmakers to adapt via a non-commercial, non-exclusive $1 option deal, and it has been adapted several times, notably into a short in 1982.
This new film version is one that has been in development for at least a couple of years – the script's passed through the hands of Malignant's Akela Cooper and A Quiet Place duo Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. The current draft is by Black Swan's Mark Heyman and we figure Savage will do some of his own work on it before it kicks off shooting early next year. And while it was originally being targeted as a theatrical release through Fox (when it existed in its previous form), it's current aiming to arrive via Hulu/Disney+ Star.