Mike Flanagan to direct Mars-set horror film The Season of Passage

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Mike Flanagan will be getting his ass to Mars as Deadline has reported that he's slated to direct an adaptation of Christopher Pike's The Season of Passage, a science-fiction horror novel revolving around the red planet.

The 1993 novel centers on Dr. Lauren Wagner, "who was involved in a manned expedition to Mars. The whole world admired and respected her. But Lauren knew fear. Inside?voices entreating her to love them. Outside?the mystery of the missing group that had gone before her. The dead group. But were they simply dead? Or something else?" Sounds spooky, and I'm definitely a sucker for any Mars-related movies. In addition to directing, Mike Flanagan will also co-write the script with James Flanagan and produce along with Intrepid Pictures' Trevor Macy. On Twitter, Flanagan said that The Season of Passage has "been a dream of time since I was a teenager.  I'm so excited to be collaborating with my brother James, and my partner in crime [Intrepid Pictures] on this epic horror movie – in space – for [Universal Pictures]."

The Season of Passage isn't the only Christopher Pike novel that Mike Flanagan is adapting, as he's also in the midst of production on The Midnight Club for Netflix. The series takes place at Rotterdam Home, a hospice for terminally ill teenagers, and follows a group of patients who begin to gather together at midnight to share scary stories. They then make a pact that whichever one of them dies first will attempt to contact the others from beyond the grave.