Issa López, whose horrific fairy tale TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID was released by Shudder last year and received positive attention from writers and filmmakers like Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and Guillermo del Toro, has signed on to write and direct a new genre project. López will be taking the helm of BOOK OF SOULS, an adaptation of the Matthew Baker short story Lost Souls.
The project is set up at Searchlight, which optioned the film rights to the short story last year with Fargo TV series creator Noah Hawley's production company 26 Keys. Lost Souls is just one of several Baker stories Hawley is interested in bringing to the screen. Hawley has a TV series adaptation of Baker's Why Visit America in the works at FX.
BOOK OF SOULS will be set in
a world in which some babies are born without souls. A young expectant mother is sent to an unusual wellness center in the desert, with the hopes that it will improve her chances of delivering a healthy baby.
López is also developing a genre project that's described as "a supernatural folklore film" for Searchlight and producer Guillermo del Toro. She has previously said that she and del Toro are working on "a werewolf movie, a supernatural Western. It's a werewolf-Western!"
It's not clear whether BOOK OF SOULS or the werewolf Western will go into production first. I'll gladly check out both, but the werewolf Western is the one I'm most excited about.