〉 The Star Wars: Force Awakens star is set to produce the adaptation through his Imaginarium banner.
Andy Serkis will work his magic behind the camera as the producer of THE RITUAL, an adaptation of the award-winning horror novel by Adam Nevill. BAFTA nominated screenwriter Joe Barton (Humans) is set to adapt Nevill’s novel, which won the August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel in 2012.
Nevill’s novel centers on four friends from college who head off into the Scandinavian wild in an effort to get away from it all and reconnect with each other. But what begins as a trip of bonding and friendship turns into a nightmare when they take a shortcut and end up lost. Some of them are injured and they seem stranded with nothing but forrest in every direction direction. While trying to find their way back to civilization, they come across what seems to be an abandoned cottage. Inside they discover ancient artifacts on the wall and bones scattered on the floor in a sacrificial manner. They soon discover that something is stalking them and is intent on keeping them from leaving the woods.
Serkis will produce the film with Jonathan Cavendish under his production banner, The Imaginarium. Chloe Sizer will oversee for Imaginarium, while Laura Wilson will oversee for eOne, which will finance and distribute.
Best known for his motion capture performances in movies like Lord of the Rings and The Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Serkis is starting to do more work behind the camera. He is set to produce, direct and star in another adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s classic, Jungle Book: Origins, which was recently pushed to a 2018 release date. He is also set to produce, direct and star in Steel Skin, a dark re-telling of the Rumplestiltskin tale. The Ritual will add another production credit to his name and will give him more opportunity to show his talent as a filmmaker.
Serkis recently appeared in Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens as Supreme Leader Snoke, a role he will reprise in Episode VIII. He is also slated to return to his motion capture role as Caesar in the Matt Reeves-directed War of the Planet of the Apes, the third installment of the franchise’s reboot. He has also appeared in a non-motion capture role as Ulysses Klaue in Avengers: Age of Ultron, a role that his is rumored to reprise in Marvel’s Black Panther.
Barton is repped by Independent Talent Group and WME.
Serkis is repped by CAA, Lou Coulson Associates, and Gotham/Principal.
—TO SEE ALL THE PROJECT DETAILS CLICK HERE—
Dino-Ray Ramos | Staff Writer
