The Atrocities film adaptation adds Brea Grant as director

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Filmmakers Brea Grant (12 Hour Shift, Lucky, Best Friends Forever) and Ed Dougherty (Paint It Black, Faceless, 7 Witches) have teamed up to form a new production company called Squirrel Park, and the first project we'll be seeing from their company is an adaptation of the Jeremy C. Shipp novella The Atrocities.

Squirrel Park has optioned the film rights to The Atrocities and Grant and Dougherty will be writing the adaptation together, with Grant set to direct the film.

The Atrocities tells the following story: 

Danna is a modern day governess who works for the elite. When she is summoned to Stockton House to tutor Isabella Evers, things are not as promised. There is no girl to tutor. She died a few months before but her parents insist her ghost is in need of an education.

Shipp had this to say about his story: 

My goal when writing the book was to create a modern-day ghost story that utilizes certain tropes of the genre while simultaneously turning these devices on their head. I wanted to explore the dissonance created by colliding the supernatural and the rational, the modern and the archaic. I also wanted to construct a nightmarescape of a house that's both grotesquely beautiful and beautifully grotesque."

Grant said, 

I have been a fan of Jeremy’s work for a number of years and am excited to bring this new take on the Gothic novel to life on screen."

Dougherty added, 

I immediately knew this was the perfect project to collaborate on. It has one of the greatest all time premises I’ve ever seen in a horror novel and I think it’ll make an unforgettable film."

I haven't read The Atrocities, but I'm interested in this project because I have been a fan of Grant's ever since she was a cast member on Heroes more than a decade ago.