David Lowery is heading back into ghost-story territory, but this time with a bigger horror infrastructure around him. The filmmaker behind “A Ghost Story,” “The Green Knight,” and the upcoming “Mother Mary” is attached to direct “The Fisherman,” a supernatural horror adaptation set up at Focus Features.
THR reports that Focus has picked up the package, based on John Langan’s 2016 novel. Lowery will co-write the script with Alex Ross Perry, the filmmaker behind “Her Smell” and “Pavements.” Focus declined to comment.
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The project also brings together a pair of busy horror outfits. Michael Bay, Brad Fuller, and Alex Ginno are producing through Platinum Dunes, the company behind “A Quiet Place” and “The Purge” films. Gary Dauberman and Mia Maniscalco will produce through Coin Operated. Dauberman is, of course, a major horror hand in his own right, with credits on New Line’s “It” and “Annabelle” films.
Langan’s novel follows Abe and Dan, two widowers who use fishing trips in upstate New York as a way to sit with their grief, or at least keep it from swallowing them whole. When Dan suggests trying a secluded place called Dutchman’s Creek, the trip begins to take on darker tones. The spot is rumored to offer people a chance to see their dead loved ones, and even a grim warning from a man in a diner about the creek’s history does not keep them away. Eventually, they come face to face with Der Fisher, also known as The Fisherman.
Published in 2016, “The Fisherman” won the Bram Stoker Award for best novel and has been described as a blend of cosmic horror and folk horror. That mix is a natural fit for Lowery, whose career has never stayed in one lane for long. He wrote and directed the modern Western romance “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,” moved into intimate supernatural territory with “A Ghost Story,” made two Disney features with “Pete’s Dragon” and “Peter Pan & Wendy,” and then turned Arthurian myth into something stranger and more haunted with “The Green Knight.”
That range is part of what makes the pairing intriguing. Lowery’s best work often circles grief, longing, myth, and the ghosts people build out of memory. “The Fisherman” gives him that terrain in a more overt horror register, backed by producers who know the genre’s commercial machinery.
Platinum Dunes, meanwhile, remains busy. The company is currently in production on “A Quiet Place Part III,” with John Krasinski back as writer and director, and was recently involved with Sony’s “Anaconda” reimagining and the Meghann Fahy thriller “Drop.”
Coin Operated is also active in the horror space. The company is in post-production on “The Revenge Of La Llorona,” New Line’s sequel to “The Curse Of La Llorona.” Dauberman was also recently hired to write the third “Five Nights At Freddy’s” movie for Blumhouse Atomic Monster and shares writing credit on the upcoming “Street Fighter.”
No release date has been set for “The Fisherman,” but the ingredients are already sharp: Lowery in grief-haunted horror mode, Perry co-writing, Focus backing the package, and Bay’s Platinum Dunes helping steer the genre machine. For a story about two men chasing the dead into cursed waters, that is a fairly sturdy boat.
