Jamie Bell is set to become a multi-hyphenate. After two decades in front of the camera, the actor will make his screenwriting debut alongside friend Max Minghella with an adaptation of Ruth Ware‘s haunted house thriller, The Turn Of The Key.
The book is Ware’s fifth novel, and revolves around a young woman who takes a lucrative job as a live-in nanny at a high-tech smart house in the Scottish Highlands, where it soon becomes clear that all is not what it seems among the picture-perfect family.
Working Title has optioned the rights to the novel, which makes sense as other books by Ware – In A Dark, Dark Wood, The Woman In Cabin 10, and The Lying Game – have previously been optioned too. Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner will produce the film for Working Title, whose executives Amelia Granger and Alexandra Loewy will oversee development.
There are plenty of haunted house thrillers out there, but the synopsis for Ware’s book also mentions a court case and prison, so there’s plenty of additional intrigue here. It will be interesting to see what Bell and Minghella can do. The latter previously made his screenwriting debut a few years ago on Alexandre Aja‘s The 9th Life Of Louis Drax.
Bell was last seen opposite Michael B. Jordan in the Amazon thriller Without Remorse, and he’s currently filming Apple’s serial killer series The Shining Girls with Elisabeth Moss.
Working Title’s upcoming slate that includes Edgar Wright‘s Last Night In Soho, Joe Wright‘s Cyrano, and Lena Dunham‘s Catherine Called Birdy.
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