Spyglass Media Group, the company behind the next Scream movie, has begun developing a very different serial killer tale titled Covenant — and wait ’til you get a load of the premise.

The project is based on a short story by Elizabeth Bear, and Spyglass has tapped 10 Cloverfield Lane scribes Josh Campbell and Matt Stuecken to write the script. Covenant was first published as part of the anthology series Hieroglyphs: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, though it’s also available to read on Slate. Snow Crash author Neal Stephenson contributed a short story to the book as well, so if you like the sound of Covenant, check it out.

The story follows a serial killer who is captured and sentenced to ‘rightminding,’ a process that will neurologically cure him of his impulse to kill. This changes not only his brain function, but his body as well, and on one cold New England morning, the hunter becomes the hunted. The movie could, of course, divulge from the short story, so we’ll have to wait and see if that’s the case. But if Campbell and Stuecken stick to the source material and find a way to flesh it out for a feature, this could be a genre project worth keeping a close eye on.

Roger Birnbaum and Michael Besman will produce for Arts District Entertainment, while Spyglass executive Chris Stone will oversee the project on behalf of the studio, which launched as a partnership between Gary Barber and Lantern Entertainment co-presidents Andy Mitchell and Milos Brajovic, and counts Warner Bros. among its investors.

Campbell and Stuecken wrote STX’s upcoming thriller Horizon Line, which stars Allison Williams. I really liked 10 Cloverfield Lane, so it’s a shame that the third film in that franchise, Netflix’s The Cloverfield Paradox, really killed the momentum of that universe. Deadline broke the news about Covenant.

via Collider