A couple years ago, New Line Cinema and producer James Wan gave a Swedish filmmaker a chance to expand his 3 minute short film into a feature. The result was LIGHTS OUT, a box office hit, and director David F. Sandberg has moved on to direct another horror hit, ANNABELLE: CREATION, with the DC Comics project SHAZAM set up to be his third film. Making that LIGHTS OUT short has really paid off for him.
Now New Line Cinema and Wan, along with producer Chris Bender, are going to be giving another short-maker a shot at success in the world of studio features. They have picked up the rights to make a feature based on Dutch filmmaker Nico van den Brink's short SWEET TOOTH (pictured above), with the writer/director signed on to take the helm of the expanded version.
New Line will be hiring a writer to flesh out van den Brink's story, which followed
a woman who comes home to her large apartment tenement. Watching the news, she discovers that her neighbors — a mother and her two kids — have been killed, but then enters creep-zone territory when she begins to hear the laughter and running of the munchkins.
The SWEET TOOTH short just made its premiere back in July, at the Fantasia International Film Festival, and doesn't appear to be online at this time.
It will definitely be interesting to see if SWEET TOOTH will be able to replicate the success of LIGHTS OUT, which made almost $150 million worldwide on a budget just under $5 million.