The sinister team of Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill are tackling an adaptation of Road of Bones, a horror novel by best-selling author Christopher Golden, for Sony Pictures’ Screen Gems label.
The duo, known for their horror scares thanks to movies such as Sinister, Doctor Strange and The Black Phone, will write the screenplay with Derrickson set to direct. The two will also produce via their Crooked Highway production banner.
The project marks the first venture to skulk up from Crooked Highway’s first-look deal with Screen Gems/Sony.
Bones is a supernatural thriller set in Siberia along the Kolyma Highway, a real highway that was built in Stalinist Soviet Union using the labor of prisoners from the region’s gulags. Lore has it that hundreds of thousands of inmates perished during the construction of the 2000 km road and due to the permafrost, it was judged easier to just built atop of the bodies.
Golden’s book is described as a mix of folk and survival horror. It tells of an American documentarian who, intrigued by the road’s history, ends up fighting for his life in one of the coldest and most remote places on Earth. St. Martin’s Press published the novel in 2022.
Golden, Vince Cheng and Pete Donaldson will serve as executive producers on the project.
Golden is the New York Times best-selling author who won Brad Storker Awards for his 2017 novel Ararat and the non-fiction Cut! Horror Writers on Horror Film. The author also works with Hellboy creator Mike Mignola in the comics space and co-created Baltimore and other titles that are part of the shared Outerverse comic book universe.
Derrickson and Cargill are coming off the February release of their Apple TV+ hit The Gorge, which they produced, with Derrickson directing. The action horror feature, which stars Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy, has become the biggest film premiere in Apple TV+ history. Next up for the duo is The Black Phone 2, which will hit Oct. 17 via Universal and Blumhouse.
Crooked Highway is repped by WME and Brillstein Entertainment Partners.
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