He’ll Come Knocking: Patrick Brice to direct Robert McCammon survival horror story

Three months ago, we heard that James Wan is developing a series adaptation of the 1988 bestseller Stinger, written by Robert R. McCammon, for the Peacock streaming service. Now The Hollywood Reporter has broken the news that Patrick Brice, whose credits include Creep, Creep 2, and There’s Someone Inside Your House, is set to direct another McCammon adaptation for Paramount Pictures and Temple Hill Entertainment producers Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey, who were behind last year’s genre hit Smile. The adaptation they’re working on is called He’ll Come Knocking.

Jordan Goldberg and Alex Paraskevas have written the He’ll Come Knocking screenplay adaptation, telling the story of an ex-con who gets a new job in a revitalized factory town in the hopes of turning around his family’s life, only to soon discover that their idyllic suburban dream requires a terrible sacrifice.

This seems to be based on the short story He’ll Come Knocking at Your Door, which was originally published in the novella Halloween Horrors. The story has the following description: When Dan Burgess came to Essex, Alabama, he was down on his luck. No job. Money almost gone. His credit rating was zero. He had an old car that was ready for the junkyard. Now money’s coming in like never before. He’s got himself a brand-new truck and landed a promotion at the plant where he works a good job. And there’ll be even more good things to come in the years ahead… IF he cooperates, that is… as Dan is about to learn, a payment is due every Halloween in Essex, and if that payment isn’t made… He’ll Come Knocking at Your Door.

The Hollywood Reporter’s sources told them the film will be in the tone of the fight-for-your-life survival aspects of such projects as Ready or Not, The Purge, and Squid Game.

McCammon has more than 20 novels and two short-story collections to his names, but there have been surprisingly few adaptations of his work. The short-lived anthology series Darkroom did bring his story Make-Up to the screen in 1981, and his story Nightcrawlers was adapted for a 1985 episode of The Twilight Zone. In 2014, Universal acquired the film rights to his werewolf novel The Wolf’s Hour and in 2019 FX was developing a series based on his novel Speaks the Nightbird, but those projects didn’t seem to go anywhere.

Does He’ll Come Knocking sound interesting to you? Are you a fan of Robert R. McCammon’s work, and have you read the story this film will be based on? Let us know by leaving a comment below.