Variety is reporting that Fox 2000 is paying John Logan a seven-figure sum to adapt The Passage. The film is based on the Justin Cronin vampire novel that Ridley Scott is developing and may wind up directing. Fox 2000 acquired rights to the book two years ago—soon after Ballantine paid $3.75 million for the novel based on a partial manuscript—but waited for the completed manuscript before work on the adaptation. That manuscript tops the scales at nearly 1,200 pages.
Variety describes the story: “In the novel, terminally ill patients become healthy after they are bitten by bats in South America, and the government conducts secret tests on human subjects to see if the virus can cure illness. The result is an apocalyptic unleashing of bloodthirsty vampire test subjects that include death row inmates.”
We first announced the sale of the book, under the pseudonym “Jordan Ainsley”, in this article in July 2007. At the time, New York magazine reported that the story was set in 2016, and “revolves around a US government project gone awry that affects a group of experimental subjects—condemned inmates plucked from death row—turning them into highly infectious vampires. Meanwhile, an orphan named Amy discovers that she has unusual powers, seemingly related to the crisis that quickly overtakes civilized society.” The story was said to be “pretty dark, though not completely without humor—the governor of Texas in 2016, for example, is Jenna Bush.”
Logan has been nominated for Academy Awards for writing Gladiator (2000) and The Aviator (2004), and nominated for Saturn Awards for Gladiator, and also for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007). He also had writing credits on Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) and The Time Machine (2002).
Scott won a Saturn Award for directing Alien (1979), and received the George Pal Memorial Award in 2004. He was nominated for two other Saturns, for directing Blade Runner (1982) and Gladiator, and was also nominated for three Academy Awards for directing Thelma & Louise (1991), Gladiator, and Black Hawk Down (2001).
Cronin—a professor of English at Rice University—has two other novels to his credit: Mary and O’Neil (Dial Press, 2001) won the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Stephen Crane Prize, both for best debut fiction of the year. The Summer Guest (Dial Press, 004) was a Booksense national bestseller.