EXCLUSIVE: Gary Dauberman‘s Coin Operated has secured the rights to Rest Stop, a recently published horror novella by Nat Cassidy, with an eye toward developing a feature adaptation.
Cassidy will adapt the screenplay, with Dauberman and Mia Maniscalco to produce through Coin Operated.
Rest Stop follows a young musician who finds himself locked inside a gas station bathroom in the middle of the night by an unseen assailant, caught between the horrors on the other side of the door and the horrors rapidly skittering down the walls inside. The story is part of Cassidy’s collection, I Know A Place: Rest Stop and Other Dark Detours, which Shortwave Publishing and Simon & Schuster released on May 5.
“I like to describe this novella as ‘Green Room meets Gerald’s Game,’” Cassidy told us. “It’s the closest thing I’ve yet written to ‘extreme’ horror — though, I wouldn’t say it goes nearly as hard or gets nearly as bleak as the most extreme ‘extreme’ horror stories I’ve read. Regardless, I’m hoping it makes your next visit to a gas station bathroom even scarier than it would otherwise be.”
Dauberman said, “Like the junk food aisle at any sketchy gas station on the side of the road, Rest Stop has a little bit of everything (that may or may not kill you). Its relentless pace, psychological torment, heartfelt character moments, and many squirm-inducing sequences make it the rare horror story that has all the ingredients for a perfectly terrifying experience on the big screen.”
A USA Today bestseller and Bram Stoker Award nominee, Cassidy’s other works include Mary, When the Wolf Comes Home and Nestlings. His award-winning plays have been produced across the country, including Off-Broadway and the Kennedy Center. He’s also been seen guest starring on shows like Law & Order: SVU, Blue Bloods, Bull, Quantico, FBI and many others, and is repped by Alec Shane at Writers House LLC.
Under a production deal with Sony/Screen Gems, Coin Operated’s first project as part of that was the video game Until Dawn, with David F. Sandberg at the helm and Dauberman as producer and writer.
Upcoming for the company is André Øvredal’s supernatural horror film Passenger, starring Melissa Leo, Lou Lloubell and Jacob Scipio, which Paramount releases May 22. Also in the works is The Revenge of La Llorona, directed by Santiago Menghini, which Warner Bros. releases next year.
Coin Operated’s development slate includes Urban Legend, a modern era reboot of the Screen Gems’ 1990s slasher movie of the same name; The Medium, based on the award-winning horror-themed video game; Ushers, based on Joe Hill’s short story, for Screen Gems; and He Never Dies, written by David Yarovesky, who will also direct.
