Amblin and Vertigo team for adaptation of reddit ghost story

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Steven Spielberg's production company Amblin Entertainment is putting a strong focus on horror these days. In the last year or so they have announced multiple genre projects – THE TURNING, LARRY, WHISPER, THE WHITE ROOM, a remake of ARACHNOPHOBIA – and now they've added another one to their slate. 

Amblin has acquired the film rights to The Spire in the Woods, a ghost story that writer Tony Lunedi posted on reddit in ten parts back in 2013, and they're teaming with producers Roy Lee and Jon Berg of Vertigo Entertainment to bring the story to the screen.

The film version of The Spire in the Woods will be called THE BELLS, and the story follows

a teen boy searching for the cause of a friend's suicide, who finds himself captivated by the same alluring but deadly ghost story as he digs deeper.

Liya Gao will be overseeing the project for Vertigo, with Lunedi's manager Josh Dove of Intellectual Property Group serving as executive producer.

I haven't read The Spire in the Woods myself, hadn't even heard of it until this movie deal was announced, but if you would like to check it out the story can still be found on reddit.

Amblin and Vertigo previously worked together on THE TURNING, which will be getting a 2020 release. Amblin didn't have anything to do with Vertigo's 2015 remake of the 1982 Spielberg production POLTERGEIST (that's the remake pictured above).