Paramount Primal Developing Film Adaptation of Nick Cutter’s Horror Novel THE TROOP
Paramount Primal is adding another nasty piece of genre material to its growing slate, and this one could make camping trips a whole lot less appealing.
The studio’s new genre label has acquired the rights to The Troop, the acclaimed 2014 horror novel from Nick Cutter, with Chris Basler tapped to write the feature film adaptation.
The Troop follows a group of boys heading out on their annual scout camping trip, only for their wilderness getaway to go horribly wrong when a mysterious intruder arrives carrying something terrifying with him.
What starts as an isolated trip into the woods becomes a vicious fight for survival as infection and fear spread through the group, turning the boys against the infected and eventually against each other.
It’s the kind of contained survival horror story that could make for a disturbing movie, especially if Paramount Primal lets the filmmakers embrace the uglier and more unsettling aspects of Cutter’s novel.
Cutter is the pseudonym of Craig Davidson, the USA Today bestselling author whose work has bounced between literary fiction and some seriously dark horror. The Troop won the James Herbert Award for Horror Writing following its release.
Under the Cutter name, Davidson has also written The Dorians, The Deep, Little Heaven, The Queen, and The Handyman Method, the last of which was co-written with Andrew F. Sullivan. Davidson’s fiction published under his own name includes Rust and Bone, The Saturday Night Ghost Club, and the short story collection Cascade.
Lyrical Media is producing the The Troop movie. The company is also behind Adam Wingard’s A24 action thriller Onslaught and the upcoming Osgood Perkins film The Young People.
The Troop is another addition to what’s quickly becoming an interesting collection of genre projects at Paramount Primal. The label, led by J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules, was formally unveiled in July and came out swinging with the announcement of a new A Nightmare on Elm Street movie, which Paramount will release domestically.
Paramount Primal is also currently in production on Tyler Falbo’s R-rated comedy Boys for Life. Other projects in development include the R-rated fantasy Tower Defense, written by Evan Daugherty, and the high-concept thriller Sweet Spot from writers Nic Curcio and Kirby Gladstein.
Turning The Troop into a movie certainly fits with what Paramount Primal appears to be building. The novel has isolation, body horror, paranoia, infection, and a group of kids trapped in a situation that keeps getting worse. There’s plenty of material here for an intense, gruesome horror film that gets under your skin in more ways than one.
For horror fans who’ve been waiting to see Cutter’s nightmare brought to the screen, this is definitely one to keep an eye on.