Amblin Picks Up The Film Rights To The Upcoming Sci-Fi Thriller Novel UPGRADE
Amblin Partners has picked up the film rights to an upcoming sci-fi thriller novel titled Upgrade, from bestselling author Blake Crouch, who will also adapt the screenplay and executive produce.
A lot of streaming services and major studios were trying to get their hands on the rights to this book, but Amblin beat them out. It definitely seems like the kind of story that fits into their wheelhouse.
The story follows “a brother and sister, both unwittingly enhanced with genetically engineered upgrades, who square off against each other in a dangerous battle of conflicting schemes to save humanity from itself.”
The story plays with elements that aren’t really new or unique with people who have genetically engineered upgrades. Then you add in the old classic tale of saving humanity from itself. The book must tell a really great story with these elements, though, if everyone in Hollywood was trying to get their hands on it.
We do have a detail plot summary from the book that offers a bit more information. You can check that out below:
“You are the next step in human evolution.”
At first, Logan Ramsay isn’t sure if anything’s different. He just feels a little . . . sharper. Better able to concentrate. Better at multitasking. Reading a bit faster, memorizing better, needing less sleep.
But before long, he can’t deny it: Something’s happening to his brain. To his body. He’s starting to see the world, and those around him—even those he loves most—in whole new ways.
The truth is, Logan’s genome has been hacked. And there’s a reason he’s been targeted for this upgrade. A reason that goes back decades to the darkest part of his past, and a horrific family legacy.
Worse still, what’s happening to him is just the first step in a much larger plan, one that will inflict the same changes on humanity at large—at a terrifying cost.
Because of his new abilities, Logan’s the one person in the world capable of stopping what’s been set in motion. But to have a chance at winning this war, he’ll have to become something other than himself. Maybe even something other than human.
And even as he’s fighting, he can’t help wondering: what if humanity’s only hope
for a future really does lie in engineering our own evolution?Intimate in scale yet epic in scope, Upgrade is an intricately plotted, lightning-fast tale that charts one man’s thrilling transformation, even as it asks us to ponder the limits of our humanity—and our boundless potential.
That sounds like it will make for an entertaining movie. For those of you not familiar with Crouch and his work, he previously wrote Wayward Pines, the series of which he executive produced alongside M. Night Shyamalan for Fox. He also worked on Good Behavior for TNT, which starred Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery and some of his upcoming projects include Recursion, which sold to Shonda Rhimes and Matt Reeves at Netflix, and that will be developed as a TV and movie franchise.
Source: Deadline