Gladiator and Star Trek Nemesis scripter John Logan (which one would you leave off your CV?) has been hired by Fox 2000 to adapt an as-yet-unpublished vampire novel called The Passage, with Ridley Scott as a potential director, reports Variety .
Fox 2000 bought the rights to the book in 2007, but it is not due out until next year. Written by Jordan Ainsley (a pseudonym for for PEN Hemingway Award-winning author Justin Cronin), the book is the first in a trilogy, and Fox acquired the rights to all three for $3.75 million, based purely on reading the first 400 pages. The first book will actually be over 1,200 pages long.
The story is about terminally ill patients who become healthy after they are bitten by bats in South America, and the government conducts secret tests on human subjects to see if the virus can cure illness. The result is an apocalyptic unleashing of bloodthirsty vampire test subjects, including death row inmates.
Rumours that Fox has demanded the addition of an angst-ridden teenage text subject who falls in love with a schoolgirl have been entirely made up by SFX… But you never know.
