A mere week after its publication, Nat Cassidy‘s horror novella Rest Stop is set for a film adaptation.
Deadline reports that Coin Operated, the production company of IT and Annabelle screenwriter Gary Dauberman, has secured the rights with an eye toward developing a feature adaptation.
The story follows a young musician who finds himself locked inside a gas station bathroom in the middle of the night by an unseen assailant, caught between the horrors on the other side of the door and the horrors rapidly skittering down the walls inside.
Cassidy will adapt the screenplay, with Dauberman & Mia Maniscalco producing through Coin Operated.
“I like to describe this novella as Green Room meets Gerald’s Game,” Cassidy told Deadline. “It’s the closest thing I’ve yet written to ‘extreme’ horror — though, I wouldn’t say it goes nearly as hard or gets nearly as bleak as the most extreme ‘extreme’ horror stories I’ve read. Regardless, I’m hoping it makes your next visit to a gas station bathroom even scarier than it would otherwise be.”
“Like the junk food aisle at any sketchy gas station on the side of the road, Rest Stop has a little bit of everything (that may or may not kill you),” Dauberman added. “Its relentless pace, psychological torment, heartfelt character moments, and many squirm-inducing sequences make it the rare horror story that has all the ingredients for a perfectly terrifying experience on the big screen.”
Rest Stop appears in Cassidy’s I Know A Place: Rest Stop and Other Dark Detours, released May 5 by Shortwave Publishing. The collection features an introduction by Stephen King, who praises it as “fucking awesome.”
Up next from Coin Operated is Passenger, in theaters May 22, followed by The Revenge of La Llorona, due out on April 9, 2027.
The company’s development slate includes the Urban Legend reboot, video game adaptation The Medium, an adaptation of Joe Hill’s short story Ushers, and He Never Dies from Brightburn filmmaker David Yarovesky.
