For any long-term Stephen King fans, a film adaptation of his short story The Boogeyman, which was originally published in book form as part of his Night Shift collection of tales, is something that has been seen to be in development at one time or another for some time. While the short story was made into the 1982 Jeff C. Scherzo movie, a theatrical play and a 27-minute movie in 2010, it was announced in November last year that a feature-length film would be moving ahead at Hulu, and that version now seems to have added Sophie Thatcher and Chris Messina to its cast list according to Deadline.
The Boogeyman was originally said to be in development in 2018 at 20th Century Fox, with writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods creating the script. Following the purchase of Fox by Disney in 2019, the word was that the pair would still be bringing their version of the story to screens, but by May 2020, it appeared that the project had fallen off the radar and seemed unlikely to be moving forward. However, the announcement at the end of last year saw Rob Savage being brought in to direct the project, but Beck and Woods now appear to be out of the picture.
Sophie Thatcher has most recently been seen in Yellowjackets as well as The Mandalorian, while Chris Messina was part of the cast on Warner Bros. Birds of Prey movie. All indications are that The Boogeyman will now be going into full production sometime later this month to debut on Hulu either at the end of this year or early in 2023. This seems like a huge step forward for the movie, which will join a host of other adaptations to have come from King’s Night Shift collection over the years since it was first published in 1978.
The Boogeyman Taps Into the Childhood Fear of Something in the Closet
The Boogeyman tells the story of a father whose children all died in mysterious circumstances at a young age. The story consists of his recounting of the details of his children’s deaths to a therapist, revealing that all of his children died in their bedrooms after uttering the word “Boogeyman.” The story appeared alongside other short tales of horror such as The Mangler, Children of the Corn, Grey Matter, Battleground, Sometimes They Come Back, The Lawnmower Man and Graveyard Shift, all of which have been adapted to screen with varying levels of success.
While Woods and Beck were seemingly well into the project when the Disney merger appeared to derail the project, leading to both of them moving onto other projects with the hope of possibly returning to it, it now seems like that is not happening. Malignant scribe Akela Cooper joined the project at one point to contribute to the scripting, and the most recent addition to the team has been Mark Heyman, who has brought his own thing to the script. How much of the original plan for the film has remained intact as the script has moved from one writer to the next is something that will probably never be known, but with actors and a direct now seemingly all set to go on the movie, we may at least get to see the final iteration make it to screens sometime within the next year.
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