As the nights draw in and the creepiness levels rise, John Cusack’s mind is turning to horror. Just yesterday, word arrivedthat he was planning to star in scare-fest Due Process. Now he’s also going back into Stephen King territory for an adaptation of Cell.
The book, which hit shelves in 2006, finds struggling graphic novel artist Clayton Riddell searching for his missing wife and son after a mysterious pulse from every mobile phone starts turning people into zombie-like psychopaths.
King is on screenwriting duty for this one, working alongside The Last House On The Left’s Adam Alleca. There’s no director attached yet, but we expect one to be locked in soon enough.
This is not the first time someone has tried to bring the novel to the screen: Eli Roth jumped on the idea when it was first published, but ditched it to focus on his own original material. Then writer John Harrison began to develop it for TV. Now, however, it will be back in movie form.
Cusack previously stalked into King’s world for 1408, and Cell finds him reunited with that film’s producer, Richard Saperstein. “I’m thrilled to be working with Stephen and John again,” Saperstein tells Screen Daily. “Cell is an intelligent psychological thriller that delivers on both a visceral and emotional level.”
Talking of terror, Cusack will be playing a killer in The Frozen Ground, which is due out next year. And, even scarier, he’s Richard Nixon in Lee Daniels’ The Butler.