Scott Frank to write and produce snowbound kidnapper thriller No Exit

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

20th Century Fox has picked up the film rights to the Taylor Adams novel NO EXIT, with screenwriter Scott Frank attached to write and produce the adaptation.

Published this past summer, NO EXIT centers on 

college student Darby Thorne, who, while on the way home to visit her mother, gets stranded in a blizzard at a highway rest stop for a night with four strangers. During the night, Thorne discovers a little girl locked in the trunk of one of the cars but she doesn’t know whose car. Without cell or phone reception and trapped by the snow, she must figure out who is the kidnapper.

That sounds like the making of a solid thriller, and I trust Frank to do something entertaining with it. Frank's previous writing credits include the Elmore Leonard adaptations GET SHORTY and OUT OF SIGHT (for which he received an Oscar nomination), the comic book adaptations THE WOLVERINE and LOGAN, and the Philip K. Dick adaptation MINORITY REPORT. He also directed THE LOOKOUT and the Lawrence Block adaptation A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES, which starred Liam Neeson (Frank and Neeson are pictured together above). The guy likes to adapt things, and he does it well.

The kidnapper element of this story reminds me of the Halle Berry movies THE CALL and KIDNAP. Make Darby a college student in her fifties, cast Berry and this could complete the trilogy.