John Herzfeld, the director of films including 15 Minutes and Escape Plan: The Extractors, will next direct the horror movie Specimen. Deadline broke the news this afternoon.
The setup for this one sounds a bit similar to NBC’s serial-killer-of-the-week series “The Hunting Party,” which was cancelled earlier this year after just two seasons.
In Specimen, “an elite team is hired to deliver the world’s worst serial killers to a secret research facility run by a visionary neuroscientist obsessed with curing evil.”
The logline continues, “When his groundbreaking experiment succeeds, he unleashes something far more dangerous than the killers he has imprisoned.”
Chase Vergari wrote the screenplay, which John Herzfeld will re-write to direct.
“What drew me to Specimen was the theme: can evil be cured, and if so, at what cost?” said Herzfeld. “The story follows a charismatic visionary who risks becoming the very thing he set out to destroy. That struggle between good and evil is as relevant now as it has ever been.”
“I wrote Specimen as the first chapter of a much larger world,” said Vergari. “I wanted to build something that works as a relentless standalone horror-thriller but opens into a universe we can keep exploring. With Eric and John attached, we have the team to do exactly that.”
John Herzfeld directed an episode of HBO’s “Tales from the Crypt” back in the 1990s. He directed Season 6’s “Comes the Dawn,” starring Michael Ironside, Bruce Payne, and Vivian Wu.
