Matt Reeves brings the vampires of Justin Cronin’s The Passage to Fox

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

20th Century Fox TV, Ridley Scott's production company Scott Free, writer Liz Heldens (creator of the TV shows Mercy, Deception, and Camp), and Matt Reeves, director of CLOVERFIELD, LET ME IN (pictured above), and DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES are teaming up to make a pilot for a vampire drama called The Passage, based on a trilogy of novels by Justin Cronin.

The development of a Passage adaptation is something we've been following for almost a decade now. Fox and Scott Free picked up the rights to Cronin's novel in the summer of 2007, at which point Cronin wasn't even finished writing the book. At first, the intention was to turn The Passage into a feature film, and multiple drafts of the script were written. Now the producers have decided that the story would be better served as a TV series, and Cronin has provided them with a good amount of material to work with – his trilogy consists of The Passage, published in 2010, The Twelve, published in 2012, and 2016's The City of Mirrors.

The first novel had the following synopsis: 

When terminally ill cancer patients get healthy after being bitten by bats in South America, the government conducts secret tests with human subjects to see if a virus can cure illness. Instead, it unleashes a swarm of bloodthirsty vampires out of the test subjects, which include death row inmates.

The trilogy 

begins as a character-driven government conspiracy thriller and morphs into a post-apocalyptic saga with vampires. The series spans over a century and focuses on a young girl named Amy who must save the human race.

This does sound like they have the makings of what could be a very interesting television series. Show or film, it's been nine years since the rights were first picked up, so it's nice just to see this project finally moving forward in some way.

Trailers for Cronin's novels can be seen below.