A handful of major players are reportedly trying to scoop up a short horror story titled The Occupant, with Deadline exclusively reporting on the hot bidding war this afternoon.
Running just 39 pages long, the story has “created a frenzy, with five bids in for movie rights and more coming, including some of the big names in the genre game.”
The Occupant was written by Victor Sweetser, and some of the names being thrown around include Zach Cregger (Barbarian), Roy Lee, Gary Dauberman, and even Seth Rogen.
What’s the story about, you ask? Deadline provides the following synopsis…
“This is the story of a 100-year old Victorian home offered up for free, with the caveat the new owner has to put it on a flatbed and move it from the lot it occupies. The story begins cleverly with texts back and forth between a husband and a wife, who cannot get over their good luck to be chosen to take the house. Naturally, we learn there is no such thing as a free house.
“The narrator is a teen named Chloe, who lives in the town where the home is being moved. She and her boyfriend Mason are disappointed to see it’s going to be plopped onto The Shole, their nickname for the shithole empty lot where the neighborhood kids go to drink, smoke and lose their virginity. They decide to explore the structure before the homeowners move in.
“In a yarn that is one part Poltergeist mixed in with Stephen King, they learn the house is haunted, and its supernatural occupant begins to turn itself loose on members of its new neighborhood, with horrifying results. It becomes a full fledged scare fest.”
Stay tuned for more on The Occupant as we learn it.