After a competitive bidding war amongst various studios, Lionsgate has acquired the latest project from Mean Dreams co-writers Kevin Coughlin and Ryan Grassby, a horror spec entitled Mother Land with Shawn Levy and Dan Cohen attached to produce.
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The story is described as a timely and high-concept piece that deals with a family who has been haunted by an evil spirit for years and their safety and surroundings come into question when one of their children begins to question if the evil is even real.
Coughlin and Grassby wrote the 2016 feature Mean Dreams, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and starred Bill Paxton, and was heralded by the Los Angeles Times as “a beautiful, dangerous picture of rural America with echoes of Terrence Malick.”
Lionsgate’s Aaron Janus and Chelsea Kujawa and 21 Laps’ Emily Morris will oversee the project, while Levy and Cohen will produce for Levy’s banner. Mother Land marks the most recent project 21 Laps has sold amidst quarantine, with last month seeing their acquisition of the highly-sought-after Reddit No Sleep article My Wife & I Bought a Ranch for Netflix, as well as successfully rebooting Unsolved Mysteries for the streaming platform and are currently awaiting to resume production on the fourth season of Stranger Things.
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21 Laps has also moved an untitled time travel pic starring Ryan Reynolds (Free Guy) from Paramount Pictures to Netflix while seeing their post-apocalyptic film Love and Monsters recently set for a PVOD release by the former studio on October 16.
