For a great many years, spec scripts of a certain action nature were described as “Die Hard but on a….” In more recent years, spec scripts of a certain action nature have found themselves described as “John Wick but with…”
Well, welcome to “John Wick but with a Bigfoot.”
Badlands, the genre label run by Scott Strauss that is an arm of Wick franchise producers Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee of Thunder Road, have acquired Wildman, a spec by budding writer Jacob Rainer.
The logline says it all: When his little brother is killed by hunters, Bigfoot goes on a quest to retrieve the body while killing everyone responsible along the way.
Rainer is a Texas native who indulged in his Bigfoot obsession and decided to enter the horror screenplay contest on Scriptshadow.net, a website dedicated to the craft of scriptwriting run by Carson Reeves (and who recently also had a hand in bringing to the fore the 190-page spec Ember Knight). As part of the contest, named Blood and Ink, Reeves highlighted scripts that caught his eye, Wildman being one them. That in turn caught the attention of manager Jake Wagner of Alibi Entertainment, who sought Reiner out.
This is Rainer’s first ever deal for screenwriting and Reeves is now attached to exec produce.
Backed by Andrew Schwartzberg and Jon Shiffman’s Renegade Capital, Badlands is gearing up for the release of its first feature Crawlers. Directed by Angel Hernandez Gomez and starring Matilda Lutz, the spider invasion movie is due for release in the U.S. on Oct. 16 via Roadside Attractions and Saban Films.
The new indie genre label also has Gomez’s horror movie Dangerous Games to Play and Hong Won-Ki’s Perfect Girl in post. It also has Ciaran Foy’s Hivemind and Luke Piotrowski’s Blasphemous heading into production this fall.
In addition to being repped by Alibi, Rainer is repped attorney Farhad Amid at McKuin Frankel.
