Spec Script Deal: “You Should Have Left”

Blumhouse Productions acquires supernatural thriller spec script “You Should Have Left” adapted by David Koepp from novel of the same name. From THR:

The book, by German author Daniel Kehlmann, tells of a screenwriter who holes up in a remote house in the Alps with his wife and daughter so he can work on a sequel to his big hit. But in shades of The Shining, the classic Stephen King novel that was adapted into a film by Stanley Kubrick, the writer slowly begins to lose his marbles.

The book, which was published in 2017, is written in the first-person and was praised for its mind-bending and hall-of-mirrors scares.

In (Kevin) Bacon and Keopp’s take, the story will jettison the screenwriting occupation and instead focus on telling the unsettling tale of a wealthy man with a younger wife and a six-year-old child. Mistrust and suspicion characterize their marriage while they are in a remote location that may or may not be obeying all the physical laws of the universe.

Bacon discovered the novel and brought it to Koepp, who directed him in the 1999 supernatural thriller Stir of Echoes. The two optioned the book together, with Koepp writing the script on spec. Blumhouse picked up the project in a competitive environment.

This is an interesting mix: Blumhouse, known for low-budget horror movies (Paranormal Activity, The Purge, Insidious), and Koepp, who’s written multiple big budget major studio films (Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible, Spider-Man, War of the Worlds, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystall Skull).

This speaks to one of the values of a spec script: Write something outside one’s ‘brand’ and, if it works on the page, redefine yourself. Here, Koepp moves into the horror-thriller space and he gets to direct the project.

Koepp is repped by CAA.

By my count, this is the 9th spec script deal in 2018.

There were 20 spec script deals year-to-date in 2017.