By MICHAEL GINGOLD
The star of THE STYLIST, LUCKY and AFTER MIDNIGHT is getting behind the camera again.
Brea Grant and Ed Dougherty (pictured above) have optioned Jeremy C. Shipp’s horror novella THE ATROCITIES for their newly launched joint venture Squirrel Park, and will co-script the feature adaptation for Grant to direct. According to the official synopsis, “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.”
“I have been a fan of Jeremy’s work for a number of years,” Grant says, “and am excited to bring this new take on the Gothic novel to life on screen.” Adds Doughterty, “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.”
Shipp says, “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.”
