Always love to see a good old-fashioned bidding war. Weapons famously had one, which resulted in Zach Cregger getting paid well and guaranteed final cut on his film. We saw how well that turned out. I mean, hell, Jordan Peele allegedly fired his management team for losing out on the project; he wanted it so much. Sometimes these bidding wars can get feisty. This time it was Jonathan Marty’s short story “The Earthing” which drew interest from multiple studios. Columbia Pictures ended up locking it down by paying six figures for the rights. Damn, that must be a good short story.
The Earthling is said to be a survival sci-fi story that’s a mix of Edge of Tomorrow and The Martian. Final Destination: Bloodlines directors Adam B. Stein and Zach Lipovsky are on board to direct the film, and another thing to note is that Eric Heisserer (who actually wrote Final Destination 5) is producing through his production company Chronology, along with Scott Glassgold’s 1201 Films. So there will be a bit of a Final Destination connection either way. And given that Heisserer is a writer himself, and actually adapted the short story that would become Denis Villenueve’s Arrival, it wouldn’t be surprising to see him take on adaptation duties, although that hasn’t been formally announced yet.
The one question that I have to wonder is: does this mean that Lipovsky and Stein aren’t going to do the Bloodlines followup? It’s clear they have a very good sense of the Final Destination series so it would be disappointing to see them leave so soon. But also, The Earthling is still in very early development, with a script still needing to be written. So maybe they’ll be able to do both? Here’s hoping it works out as the directing duo really seems to have a good grasp on what makes the “death comes for you” series work. But either way, I know I’m excited to see what they get up to next!
