‘The Occupant’ – New Line and Zach Cregger Acquire Hot Horror Story After Bidding War

We had learned last week that a handful of major players were trying to scoop up a short horror story titled The Occupant, and THR provides an update on that bidding war this week.

Running just 39 pages long, the story was written by Victor Sweetser, and THR reports that New Line has prevailed as the winner of the auction. Attached to produce for New Line? Zach Cregger, who wrote and directed last year’s horror hit Barbarian.

THR notes, “There were numerous studios and filmmakers fighting in the trenches for the project — Paramount, Lionsgate, Amazon — but in the end it was New Line that won it.”

Roy Lee and Scott Glassgold will produce the film adaptation alongside Cregger.

“Occupant is described as a reverse haunted house story. Instead of a family moving into an abode, here a historical house is moved for preservation purposes into a neighborhood.”

Deadline had previously provided 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.”

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