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EXCLUSIVE: Badlands, the new indie genre label of longtime Sony exec Strauss and Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee’s Thunder Road, has preemptively acquired Hivemind, a new spec script from Peter Gaffney.
Hivemind is billed as an environmental thriller about the evolution of a new breed of killer wasps and the small town authorities who team up to prevent a deadly global outbreak. Gaffney, Adam Rodin and Brad Luff will serve as producers.
The acquisition is the second for Badlands in recent weeks on the heels of Lions, Tigers, and Bears, a creature feature that came in as a pitch from screenwriter Jayson Rothwell. The first project set to emerge from the company, making an aggressive push into the genre space, is Arachnid, a spider thriller directed by Ángel Gómez Hernández and starring Matilda Lutz, which recently wrapped production.
“We went into production six months after acquiring ARACHNID,” Strauss told Deadline. “HIVEMIND is such a compelling script I expect our timeline to be similar. I appreciate Peter and his team for recognizing and putting faith in Badlands alternative to studio development.”
Gaffney’s prior credits include Yeti at Netflix and Don’t Go in the Water at Universal. He is represented by Verve, Rodin, and Rob Goodman at McKuin Frankel, whereas Badlands and Thunder Road are repped by CAA Media Finance.
Inspired by a true story from 2001, Badlands’ Lions, Tigers, and Bears sees unsavory characters keeping animals in captivity get their just desserts when a set of ultimate predators break free and team up for revenge. Backed by Andrew Schwartzberg and Jon Shiffman’s Renegade Capital, the company launched just last year. Badlands commences production on Dangerous Games To Play, also directed by Hernández, this summer and shoots Hong Won-ki’s K-pop thriller Perfect Girl this fall.
