David Koepp is teaming up with Blumhouse to adapt You Should Have Left, based on the novel of the same name, reports THR.
Kevin Bacon (Tremors, Friday the 13th) will star and produce. Koepp wrote the script and will direct the feature, which is eyeing a production start later this year.
“The book, by German author Daniel Kehlmann, told 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 when unexplained occurrences begin to chip away at him.”
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.
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.
Koepp is the veteran screenwriter who counts Jurassic Park, Spider-Man, and Panic Room among his credits. In addition to Echoes, his directing credits include the thriller The Trigger Effect and Secret Window, which is interestingly similar to You Should Have Left.
