Source: Deadline

Cloverfield and Let Me In director Matt Reeves is set to helm The Passage, an adaptation of the book of the same name by Justin Cronin. Cronin's novel, originally written under a pseudonym, chronicles an experiment that goes wrong and unleashes an army of vampires on the world, bringing it to the verge of extinction. Distributor Fox 2000 purchased the book in 2007 for more than $3 million and since partnered with Tony and Ridley Scott's Scott Free production company to develop the forthcoming film adaptation.

Reeves' last film was a remake of the Norwegian vampire film Let the Right One In, and The Passage seems like a similarly mature take on vampire mythology; in other words, this will not merely follow in the commercial footsteps of teen romance franchises like Twilight. John Logan, who wrote Gladiator and The Aviator, wrote the first draft of the script, but his duties on the script for the next Bond film will keep him from participating in the work Reeves is doing currently to get the The Passage ready to go into production.

Reeves also signed a deal last week for another project, an adaptation of a short story by Ray Nelson entitled 8 O'Clock in the Morning, about a human being who discovers that he is being controlled by aliens. While Reeves is only supervising the rewrite of The Passage, he is writing 8 O'Clock himself, which should mean that it will happen after he's finished shooting The Passage, whose script is more finished than the other film.