Roland Emmerich to adapt Blake Crouch sci-fi novel Dark Matter

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

Bombastic disaster film director Roland Emmerich is taking a rare turn into more heady sci-fi material, announcing that his next project will be DARK MATTER, based on the Blake Crouch novel of the same name. The novel was released this year, so it's likely most of you haven't gotten to it yet, but he's also the man who wrote the source material for the series Wayward Pines, which should pique some interest.

In the novel:

“Are you happy with your life?” 
 
Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious. 
 
Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits. 
 
Before a man Jason’s never met smiles down at him and says, “Welcome back, my friend.”  
 
In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.
 
Is it this world or the other that’s the dream? And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could’ve imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.

Andrea Giannetti is overseeing the project for Sony with Matt Tolmach producing.