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EXCLUSIVE: Amazon MGM Studios and Scott Stuber have acquired The Girl in the Lake, a proposal for an adult mystery thriller novel by New York Times bestselling author Lauren Oliver. Oliver will write the script for a film that will be developed for United Artists. Scarlett Johansson is eyeing this to star as the title character, subject to script, Deadline hears.
Stuber and Nick Nesbitt will produce along with Johansson and Jonathan Lia, through These Pictures, and Marc Resteghini (Young Sherlock) through Jack Tar Pictures. Oliver will also serve as executive producer.
The logline is being kept under wraps but when Verve held the auction, the novel was being described as What Lies Beneath meets The Sixth Sense. This was a high-end screen deal and a publishing auction is in the offing. Oliver’s making the jump to an adult thriller after writing YA novels that include Panic; the Delirium trilogy Delirium, Pandemonium and Requiem; and Before I Fall, which was adapted into a film in 2017. Panic was also turned into a series by Amazon Studios.
Aside from being one of Stuber’s first big projects since the former Netflix Head of Film committed to revive the UA label under the Amazon MGM umbrella, The Girl in the Lake reunites him with Johansson after their work together on the Oscar-nominated films Marriage Story and In Good Company.
Verve, Stephen Barbara at Inkwell Management, Howie Sanders at Anonymous Content and Jamie Feldman represent Oliver. Johansson is with CAA and Yorn Levine Barnes.
Resteghini, who has an overall television and first-look film deal at Amazon MGM, oversaw Oliver’s series Panic when he ran TV development for the studio.
Stuber is currently producing Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein for Netflix, and Deliver Me From Nowhere, the Scott Cooper-directed drama that stars The Bear‘s Jeremy Allen as Bruce Springsteen as the iconic singer hit an existential crossroads and turned it into the seminal album Nebraska. That film is for 20th Century Studios and Disney.
