Aja, Flanagan, and Amblin team for interactive haunted house film

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Alexandre Aja and Mike Flanagan, two of the biggest names working in the horror genre these days, are teaming up to craft a haunted house movie for Steven Spielberg's company Amblin Partners – and this one will have the added drawing point of being an interactive film with a branched narrative. That is to say, it will be a "choose your own adventure" movie, like the recent Netflix experiment BLACK MIRROR: BANDERSNATCH. The difference here is that this won't just be a "choose your own adventure" movie to be watched at home on a streaming service, this one is intended to get theatrical release.

Collider reports that, 

to develop the project, Amblin Partners is working with Kino Industries’ CtrlMovie technology, which empowers filmmakers to create branched narrative, interactive feature films that allow audiences to influence the storyline. Using an app on their cell phones, audience members will be able to vote in the theater to decide what characters will do at pivotal points in the narrative, meaning that Aja’s film will have a different plot, ending and even running time depending on the audience’s choices.

Flanagan put the idea together with his frequent co-writer Jeff Howard. Howard and Aja will be writing the screenplay with THE GIRL IN THE PHOTOGRAPHS director/co-writer Nick Simon.

Aja will be directing the project and executive producing alongside his longtime collaborator Greg Levasseur and Tobias Webber, co-founder of Kino Industries and inventor of the CtrlMovie technology. Chady Eli Mattar and Scott C. Silver are producing the film, with Jeb Brody and John Buderwitz overseeing for Amblin.

Aja's most recent film was the "nature run amok" film CRAWL, and he has an adaptation of the horror manga Tomie in development for the upcoming streaming service Quibi. Flanagan is currently working on the Netflix shows The Haunting of Bly Manor and Midnight Mass, and has the Stephen King adaptation DOCTOR SLEEP coming to theatres in November.