Well here’s some interesting news, via Deadline: Studiocanal has scored the rights to adapt Peter Cameron’s 2020 novel What Happens at Night (which has drawn comparisons to Stephen King’s The Shining) as a full-blown feature film, with the legendary Martin Scorsese onboard to produce the project.
Here’s how Deadline describes the novel:
“What Happens At Night … is a dream-like story of a married American couple who travel to a small, snowy European town to adopt a baby. The couple check into a cavernous, largely deserted hotel where they encounter an enigmatic cast of characters including a flamboyant chanteuse, a depraved businessman and a charismatic faith healer. Nothing is quite as it seems in this strange, frozen world. As the couple struggle to claim their baby, the less they seem to know about themselves and the life they’ve built together.”
Cameron’s novel was a finalist for the LA Times’ Book Prize for Fiction, and described by the Times of London as “a mystery story, even a bit of a thriller, with some piggybacking on the ready-made sinister atmosphere of The Shining.” Based on the description above, we can imagine that comparison being apt!
Oscar-nominee Patrick Marber (Notes on a Scandal, Mike Nichols’s Closer) has signed on to adapt the novel into screenplay form, and the project is currently in the process of finding a director. One imagines, given the talent and material that are already involved, that What Happens at Night will find one sooner rather than later.
We’re very excited to learn more about this one (and, indeed, to find out who gets the directorial gig here). Do stay tuned for further updates on What Happens at Night as they become available – we’ll be monitoring this situation closely.
