More urban legends are coming true at Screen Gems. Sony’s horror and genre division is developing a reboot of Urban Legend, the 1998 slasher starring Alicia Witt as a college student who found herself at the center of a series of killings seemingly inspired by urban legends (like a killer lurking in the backseat of a car or the hook-handed killer who attacks a couple in a vehicle). According to The Hollywood Reporter, which first reported the news, Sony’s Until Dawn movie writer-producer Gary Dauberman is producing the Urban Legend reboot that has hired Killer Assistant and Kidnapped writer Shanrah Wakefield to pen the script.
Amid the slayings inspired by urban legends, Natalie (Witt) set out to find the truth about Pendleton University’s own legend: a 25-year-old tale of a student massacre at the hands of an Abnormal Psych professor. While fraternities commemorated the 25th anniversary, Natalie discovered she was the focus of the crazed killer’s in the ultimate urban legend: the story of her own horrific murder.
1998’s Urban Legend also starred Jared Leto, Michael Rosenbaum, Tara Reid, Joshua Jackson, Rebecca Gayheart, Natasha Gregson Wagner, Danielle Harris, John Neville (The X-Files), and horror legend Robert Englund (A Nightmare on Elm Street).
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It’s unclear if the reboot will double as a decades-later sequel with legacy stars, like the recent revivals of the Halloween, Scream, The Exorcist, and I Know What You Did Last Summer franchises. The new movie is described as “an examination of what an urban legend looks like in a post-digital world.”
Original Film’s Neal H. Moritz, one of the producers of the 1998 movie, is also in talks to produce the reboot. The Fast & Furious and Sonic the Hedgehog franchise producer is a veteran of the horror genre, having produced 1997’s I Know What You Did Last Summer, 1998’s I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, and 2008’s Prom Night at Screen Gems, and this summer’s I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel/reboot at Sony’s Columbia Pictures.
Dauberman, producing via his Coin Operated banner, co-created the DC Comics-based TV series Swamp Thing and has written such horror hits as the Annabelle trilogy, the two-part film adaptation of Stephen King’s It, and the Conjuring Universe installment The Nun. Most recently, he wrote, directed, and produced the ‘Salem’s Lot remake at Max.
The original Urban Legend grossed over $70 million at the box office against a budget of $14 million and inspired two sequels, 2000’s Urban Legends: Final Cut and the straight-to-DVD Urban Legends: Bloody Mary in 2005.
Following Until Dawn, the Urban Legend reboot joins a Screen Gems slate that includes the upcoming Insidious 6 and The Haunting of Wicker Park.
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