Sam Raimi and Josh Cooley Are Developing a 99 NIGHTS IN THE FOREST Movie
Josh Cooley is heading into one seriously dangerous forest for his next project, and he’s bringing Sam Raimi along for the ride.
After directing Transformers One, Cooley has signed on to write 99 Nights in the Forest, a feature adaptation of the massively popular Roblox survival game for 20th Century Studios.
The studio secured the rights after a highly competitive battle for the property. A director hasn’t been attached yet, but there’s already some great genre talent involved on the producing side.
Raimi, whose credits include Send Help and the Evil Dead franchise, will produce alongside Rob Tapert (Don’t Breathe) through Ghost House Pictures. The combination of Cooley and Raimi makes this a pretty interesting project, especially considering just how creepy the game can get.
Produced by Grandma’s Favourite Games, 99 Nights in the Forest drops players into a haunted wilderness where the goal is exactly what the title promises: survive 99 nights. At the same time, players are tasked with rescuing four missing children while trying not to get killed by a vicious deer and the other creatures roaming the woods.
The game hasn’t even been around for a full year, yet it has already become the seventh most-played game of all time on Roblox. It has racked up nearly 26 billion lifetime visits and currently holds a 90.6% player rating.
Game creators Alec Kieft, also known as Cracky4, Matthew Hufton, aka ForyxeV, and Cameron Angland, aka Viridial, will serve as executive producers. Ghost House’s Romel Adam (Evil Dead Rise) and Jose Cañas (Play Dead) are also executive producing.
Cooley brings an impressive animation résumé to the adaptation. He won an Academy Award for Toy Story 4, his feature directorial debut, and recently directed Transformers One, the first fully CG-animated feature in the Transformers franchise, which was actually really good! His Pixar credits also include Inside Out, Coco, Incredibles 2, Onward, and Soul.
There’s no word yet on whether 99 Nights in the Forest will be live-action, animated, or some combination of the two. There’s also no release date or casting information at this point.
Still, a survival horror story involving missing kids, a haunted forest, vicious creatures, and a nightmare deer sounds like material that fits nicely under the Ghost House banner.
Now we’ll have to see what Cooley comes up with for the screenplay and who 20th Century Studios eventually brings in to direct.