Focus Features lands movie rights to Paul Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

A new novel from author Paul Tremblay will be hitting bookshelves next month and Focus Features is hoping that a film adaptation will scare up big box-office as Deadline is reporting that Focus prevailed in an auction for the rights to make an elevated genre movie from Tremblay's A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS. 

Deals are being closed for Ben Collins & Luke Piotrowski to write the script and for Dan Dubiecki’s Allegiance Theater to produce with Team Downey, the shingle run by Robert Downey Jr and Susan Downey.

The book is said to blend domestic drama, psychological suspense and modern horror. Here's a synopsis of A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS, which William Morrow will be publishing next month:

The lives of the Barretts, a normal suburban New England family, are torn apart when fourteen-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia.

To her parents’ despair, the doctors are unable to stop Marjorie’s descent into madness. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help. Father Wanderly suggests an exorcism; he believes the vulnerable teenager is the victim of demonic possession. He also contacts a production company that is eager to document the Barretts’ plight. With John, Marjorie’s father, out of work for more than a year and the medical bills looming, the family members agree to be filmed and soon find themselves the unwitting stars of “The Possession,” a hit reality television show. When events in the Barrett household explode in tragedy, the show and the shocking incidents it captures become the stuff of urban legend.

Fifteen years later, a bestselling writer interviews Marjorie’s younger sister, Merry. As she recalls those long ago events that took place when she was just eight years old, long-buried secrets and painful memories that clash with what was broadcast on television begin to surface—and a mind-bending tale of psychological horror is unleashed, raising vexing questions about memory and reality, science and religion, and the very nature of evil.