Paranormal Director Heads Across River

Prepares sacrifice for Akiva Goldsman

Paranormal Director Heads Across River

by Owen Williams |
Published on

He didn't stay around for Paranormal Activity 3, but the director of the second instalment, Tod "Kip" Williams, is sticking with horror for his next film. He's currently at work preparing Christopher Buehlman's novel Those Across The River for the screen.

The book, set in Georgia during the Great Depression, involves Frank Nichols, a disgraced academic and Great War veteran who inherits property in a rural town. Planning to write a book about his grandfather, a horrendous plantation owner who refused to release his slaves at the end of the Civil War, Nichols heads down to his inheritance, and finds a community still darkly in thrall to his family's history. Nobody visits the plantation anymore - abandoned and isolated on the far side of a river - but a long-standing tradition called 'The Chase' sees two pigs sent across the river every month (to an unknown fate) as a ritual offering. When, due to hard times, the townsfolk vote to knock The Chase on the head, things start gettin' bad.

Mike Medavoy (Black Swan) picked up the rights to the novel for Akiva Goldsman's Weed Road production company, and Williams will both direct and write the screenplay. It doesn't look as if Those Across The River has been published yet in the UK, but the American edition is easily enough available from Ace Books.

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