Ashleigh Hill-Buxton
Jason Keller has been hired by Fox 2000 to adapt Justin Cronin’s 2009 novel ”The Passage” from page to screen as revealed by Hollywood Reporter.
With vampires and stories of a post-apocalypse currently being all the rage amongst readers, television-viewers and moviegoers alike, it is no surprise that Cronin’s novel has been snapped up by Fox 2000 as the next big thing; the first in a planned trilogy, ”The Passage” is set a hundred years in the future where an a genetic experiment aimed at lengthening the human life span mutates, causing people to become infected with a virus that turns them into vampires.
Director Matt Reeves (“Let Me In”) began developing the project in April after an original script was written by John Logan and Ridley Scott, who at the time was considering directing the film but has since stayed on as a producer. Keller has also written for Relativity Media’s “Machine Gun Preacher” and presently untitled “Snow White” project, starring Julia Roberts.
”The Passage” is described as beginning in the near future and depicts an apocalyptic world where a project to develop an immunity-boosting drug mutates into a highly contagious virus that transforms people into vampire-like creatures; the events of the story then turn post-apocalyptic as the remaining colonies of humans uninfected by the virus are forced to live and survive in a world where superhuman creatures are always on the hunt for fresh blood.
