Three years have gone by since it was announced that Get Out, Us, and Nope director Jordan Peele had signed on to produce a reboot of Wes Craven’s 1991 film The People Under the Stairs (watch it HERE) for Universal Pictures, and now we finally have an update to share about the project. While the reboot is still described as being in “early development”, Deadline reports that Doom Patrol and Night Sky writer Ezra Claytan Daniels has signed on to write the screenplay.
Peele will be producing The People Under the Stairs with Win Rosenfeld through their company Monkeypaw Productions. Peele and Rosenfeld previously produced (and co-wrote) the 2021 reboot of the Candyman franchise.
Written and directed by Craven, the original film followed young Fool, who breaks into the home of his family’s greedy and uncaring landlords. There he discovers a disturbing scenario where incestuous adult siblings have mutilated a number of boys and kept them imprisoned under stairs in their large, creepy house. As Fool attempts to flee before the psychopaths can catch him, he meets their daughter, Alice, who has been spared any extreme discipline by her deranged parents. Fool and Alice attempt to escape.
Brandon Adams, Everett McGill, Wendy Robie, A.J. Langer, and Ving Rhames starred.
Wes Craven had been interested in returning to the concept of The People Under the Stairs himself – in the days before his death in 2015, he was even developing a TV series based on the film for Syfy.
Deadline notes that “Daniels most recently contributed to Jordan Peele’s NYT Bestselling short story anthology, Out There Screaming. The multidisciplinary artist is the creator of the Eisner, Harvey, and Ignatz Award-nominated graphic novels, Upgrade Soul and BTTM FDRS. Upgrade Soul was adapted into an Audible original series and is currently in development as a film with a AAA director. He also wrote a segment for the film Horror Noire. He was also Executive Story Editor on Doom Patrol and staffed on Amazon’s Night Sky.”
Are you interested in seeing a Jordan Peele-produced reboot of The People Under the Stairs? What do you think of the choice of Ezra Claytan Daniels as writer? Let us know by leaving a comment below.