Sony is making moves on its adaptation of the 2020 novel Home Before Dark, adding filmmaker Patrick Brice to direct from a script by Blair Butler. 21 Laps, the Shawn Levy-led production banner behind Stranger Things and The Adam Project, is producing.
The plot of the film, which is in early development, is being kept under wraps, though Riley Sager’s book is centered on a young woman, Maggie, whose family fled their Victorian home 25 years earlier in an event that inspired her father to pen a best-selling nonfiction book claiming they experienced a haunting. Maggie, now an adult, doesn’t remember those events and doesn’t believe her father’s book. But when she inherits the old family home after her father’s death, she starts to question if there’s more to the house than she believed.
SVP Emily Morris and creative executive Emily Feher will oversee the adaptation for 21 Laps.
Brice most recently directed the slasher film There’s Someone Inside Your House for Netflix and cut his teeth on 2014’s Creep, the low-budget Mark Duplass starrer that became a cult hit and spawned a 2017 sequel. He also helmed episodes of the Duplass brothers’ Room 104 as well as the Sundance feature Corporate Animals, starring Demi Moore, Jessica Williams and Ed Helms, and The Overnight, starring Taylor Schilling, Adam Scott, Jason Schwartzman and Judith Godrèche.
Home Before Dark is a reunion for Sony and Butler, with Sony’s Screen Gems releasing The Invitation in theaters over the weekend. Butler’s previous credits include the 2019 horror film Polaroid and the 2018 slasher Hell Fest. She previously served as a producer on Hulu and Marvel’s series Hellstrom, and is developing Omega with Sony Pictures and Mortal Kombat director Simon McQuoid.
Brice is repped by CAA, Grandview and Jackoway Austen. Butler is repped by CAA, Industry Entertainment and Lichter Grossman. Sager is repped by Hotchkiss Daily & Associates and Trellis Literary.
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