WOMAN IN BLACK Producer Buys Jack The Ripper Script

The Woman in Black opened at number two on the box office with $21million, and now the film's producers may have found their next project. THR reports that Hammer Films has purchased the rights to Ian Fried's Gaslight, a spooky thriller script that was on the 2011 Black List. Hammer is Exclusive Media's genre arm. Tobin Armbrust will oversee the project for Hammer. Guy East and Nigel Sinclair, and Hammer CEO Simon Oakes are attached to produce.

The project is described as "in the vein of From Hell and The Silence of the Lambs." The story imagines that "Jack the Ripper, secretly imprisoned in a London insane asylum, is called upon to help Scotland yard solve a series if murders that share the iconic death brand: dual puncture wounds to the neck."

Fried made the Black List in 2010 with his dark fantasy The Ever After Murders, featuring "fairy tale characters embroiled in a series of murders." Fried is currently writing Spectral, an original supernatural action project for Legendary.

The Jack the Ripper story has always fascinated me. I remember first seeing it onscreen in Time and Again, which is a great time travel sci-fi thriller. From Hell was great, and I think that this sounds like a cool project. What are your thoughts?

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