Grady Hendrix’s Horrorstör to be assembled as a feature film

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

This one's for all you IKEA lovers (or haters) out there.

It's been announced that New Republic Pictures has optioned New York Times best-selling author Grady Hendrix’s novel Horrorstör, with plans to assemble a feature film based on the premise. Speaking of which, Horrorstör takes place at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio where one morning, employees arrive to find that the store has been ransacked and vandalized in a manner that is most curious. Determined to get to the bottom of whatever's going on, six employees volunteer to stay overnight to hopefully discover what's causing the strange disturbances.

Previously, Horrorstör was meant to be set up as a television series with Charlie Kaufman, Gail Berman and Josh Schwartz producing at Fox and then at AMC. However, that method of assembly has since been scrapped with Hendrix now adapting his own book for the big screen. The novel is Hendrix's first, which had been released by Quirk Books in 2013. Since that time, the book has been translated into more than a dozen languages across the globe.

In speaking with Deadline about bringing his novel to audiences by way of the silver screen, Hendrix said, “I wrote Horrorstör to be simultaneously funny and scary, while paying tribute to the retail warriors who staff our big box stores. Having the opportunity to adapt my novel into a movie is a dream come true. I couldn’t be more excited about taking an audience and trapping them overnight with me in the flatpack hell that is Orsk — the ultimate haunted house, full of Infinite aisles, murderous ghosts, and incomprehensible faux-Scandinavian names.”

“Horrorstör is such a fun and inventive blend of satire with a contemporary haunted house story that is so uniquely Grady Hendrix,” says Brett Cohen, President and Publisher of Quirk Books. “And Quirk is thrilled to partner with New Republic and Aperture Entertainment as Hendrix re-imagines and further explores this story for a whole new audience.”

You guys, I think my "Billy" shelving unit just moved on its own. I think I'm going to wrap this sucker up and relocate to my living room, the one room in the house that doesn't have potentially haunted IKEA-brand products on display.