Javier Gullón Adapting Clarence Hammond’s Horror Short Story ‘Final Boarding’ For Screen Gems

EXCLUSIVE: Spanish screenwriter Javier Gullón has been tapped to adapt Final Boarding, a horror film for Sony’s Screem Gems, based on a short story by Clarence Hammond.

Plot details for the film are under wraps. Ashley Brucks optioned the story when she started as President of Screen Gems in the fall of 2023. Exec-turned-producer Hammond will produce alongside Brucks, his former colleague at Paramount Players.

This marks the second studio horror project that Gullón has lined up recently, following his pitch sale of the Sarah Pinsker novella Two Truths and a Lie to Walter Hamada’s 18hz and Paramount. Prior to that, Gullón’s hot thriller spec The Bet sold preemptively to Warner Bros with 42 producing.

Establishing himself recently as one of the industry’s most sought-after writers of elevated horror, Gullón most famously wrote Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy, an A24 psychological thriller starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Plot details for both of his other upcoming projects are under wraps, though Pinsker’s Two Truths and a Lie follows Stella, who begins to question her reality when she uncovers a childhood memory of a disturbing TV show she thought was imaginary, only to find that her mom and an old friend confirm it really happened, leading her to unravel a dark mystery tied to her town’s past. Gullón’s spec The Bet has been described as a twisty, female-led thriller with pitch-black humor, set at a glittering destination for the ultra-rich.

A Goya Award nominee, Gullón has previously sold and adapted numerous short stories at auction for film and TV including Neanderthal (fka N) which sold in a 10-way bidding war to New Regency/See-Saw with Garth Davis directing. His spec 478 was produced within one year of being picked up by Aronfoksy’s Protozoa Pictures; Arnold Schwarzenegger led the film, ultimately titled Aftermath. Other feature credits include Aritz Moreno’s Moscas and Advantages of Travelling by Train, as well as the 2022 Netflix pic Rainbow. He is repped by UTA, 42, and attorney Robert Szymanski.

In addition to Paramount Players, Hammond formerly worked at an executive at Overbrook Entertainment before seguing to producing titles like Hala and Charm City Kings. He is repped by Fourth Wall Management.