Devolution movie lands James Ashcroft as director

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Actor James Ashcroft recently made his feature directorial debut with the horror film Coming Home in the Dark, which had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival back in January. Netflix holds the distribution rights to Coming Home in the Dark, and while we wait to hear when the general audience will have the chance to watch the movie, Ashcroft has already closed a deal for his second feature. Legendary has hired him to direct Devolution, an adaptation of a Bigfoot novel written by World War Z author Max Brooks. (Pick up a copy at THIS LINK.)

Ashcroft and his writing partner Eli Kent are also working on the script for Devolution. The film will tell the story of 

a tech-focused, “green” community in the deep forests of Washington State that is left isolated by a natural disaster. The social structure rapidly disintegrates as the members contend first with being cut off from the modern world and then with a pack of mysterious predators who turn out to be Sasquatch creatures. The book, published in 2020, told the story via the journals of town resident Kate Holland.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, 

Legendary is hoping to make a horror piece that has something to say about the state of humanity when the veneer of civility is stripped away and nature takes over.

Devolution was first announced in 2012, when Jack Bender (Lost, Child's Play 3) was on board to direct the film from a screenplay by David Leslie Johnson (The Conjuring 2 and 3), "based on an idea from Max Brooks". After that iteration of the project fell apart, Brooks turned his idea into the novel Devolution: A First Hand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre, which was published last year.

We'll keep you updated on Devolution as the project moves forward.