Ridley Scott cashing in on the Vampire Craze

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John Logan will be adapting The Passage, the Jordan Ainsley vampire novel. This would mark the first time Logan and Scott have collaborated since the Oscar-winning Gladiator.

Fox 2000 acquired the book two years ago, signing a deal for the as of yet unwritten three-book series. At the time the publishing rights had just sold to Ballantine. Ainsley (pseudonym for PEN Hemingway Award-winning author Justin Cronin) sold the book based on the first 400 pages and an outline. The film’s adaptation was awaited his completed book, which is now nearly 1,200 pages.

In the novel, terminally ill patients in South America become healthy after they are bitten by bats. The government learns about this and begins conducting secret tests on human subjects to see if the virus can really cure illness. As a result, bloodthirsty vampire test subjects, include death row inmates, begin to terrorize the world.

Logan, who wrote Gladiator with David Franzoni and William Nicholson, most recently wrote Gore Verbinski’s animated film Rango and Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s Bioshock as well as Michael Mann’s Empire.

Adapting a 1,200 page book into even a three hour movie is a monumental task which risks losing much of the source material, but the prospect of Scott directing a vampire film is quite the enticing prospect.

Source: Variety

Mike Noyes received his Masters Degree in Film from the Academy of Art University, San Francisco. A few of his short films can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/user/mikebnoyes. He recently published his first novel which you can buy here: https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Days-Years-Mike-Noyes-ebook/dp/B07D48NT6B/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1528774538&sr=8-1&keywords=seven+days+seven+years