This past Friday, New Line – the studio once beaten into submission by polar bears – picked up a spec script entitled The Watching Hour, written by Carey and Shane Van Dyke. The grandsons of legendary comedian Dick Van Dyke appear to have spent a good chunk of their careers writing and acting in Asylum films.

Their script is described as a home invasion scenario with aliens, which immediately brings to mind A) Signs and B) Dark Skies. The latter is an unproduced treatment written by Steven Spielberg in between his friendlier extraterrestrial films, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and E.T.. Deciding he only wanted to produce, he handed it over to John Sayles to tweak and direct. Shortly thereafter, it was completely abandoned when Spielberg wrote a kinder alien character into the film who befriended the terrorized family’s son and, well, many people’s childhoods were forever changed.

Here’s hoping this spec script is less like Signs and more like… anything but Signs.