EXCLUSIVE: Bluestone Leisure has preemptively acquired rights to The Assist Group for the Possessed, the unique horror quick story written for Assemble Media by J. Preston Witt, with plans to provide a function adaptation alongside Assemble.

Scribes set to adapt the pic are Andrew Deutschman and Jason Pagan, the duo behind Paramount’s discovered footage title Mission Almanac, in addition to Paranormal Exercise: The Ghost Dimension.

In The Assist Group, a affected person, charged with a homicide they can not keep in mind, finds themselves subjected to a 5150 psychiatric maintain in an establishment. There, they uncover a chilling reality: the ability is devoted to treating issues that stem from supernatural causes.

The Assemble workforce got here up with the unique idea earlier than growing it into a brief story, featured within the third version of its genre-focused quarterly quick story journal, Assemble Artifacts, which is revealed by means of Blackstone Publishing. Producers of the variation will embrace Richard Saperstein for Bluestone, Jack Heller for Assemble Media, Trevor Engelson for Underground, and John Graham. Assemble Media’s VP of Growth & Manufacturing, Caitlin de Lisser-Ellen, will exec produce alongside Assemble’s President of IP and Literature, Steven Salpeter. Bluestone’s Annie Saperstein, Brooke Saperstein, Beau Turpin, and Sandy Shenkman may even govt produce.

Overseen by Heller and De Lisser-Ellen, Assemble Media is a lit-focused manufacturing firm that generates tasks from the bottom up, working with novelists at each stage to develop and package deal their authentic tales, a lot of which they’ve arrange at networks, studios and streamers, after securing their publication. Different present tasks for the corporate embrace Mercy Sparx and Instafamous, arrange at Amazon/MGM and MGM TV, respectively, and Display Gems’ Paradise Courtroom.

Beforehand, Assemble has produced S. Craig Zahler’s Brawl in Cell Block 99 starring Vince Vaughn, Gia Coppola’s Venice-premiering Andrew Garfield starrer Mainstream for IFC Movies, and John Michael McDonagh’s drama The Forgiven, starring Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain. The fifth challenge of its Assemble Artifacts magazine, that includes tales spanning sci-fi, horror and comedy, was launched on December fifth.

Based by former senior studio exec Saperstein, Bluestone Leisure develops, funds, and produces mid-budget options and TV sequence throughout all genres. Presently, the corporate is in pre-production on Nuremberg, the historic drama written and to be directed by James Vanderbilt, which has set Russell Crowe, Rami Malek and Michael Shannon to star.

Assemble was represented within the deal by Marc H. Simon and Daniel Spencer of Fox Rothschild. Pagan and Deutschman are repped by WME, Underground and Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz.