Lauren Oliver, the author behind bestselling young adult books like Delirium, Panic, and Before I Fall, has sold the adult mystery thriller The Girl in the Lake to Amazon MGM Studios, who will develop it under their United Artists label.
According to Deadline, who broke the news, the project sold at auction is a “high-end screen deal” and an auction is about to happen for rights to publish the book version. And while Oliver has yet to write the script (or the book), Scarlett Johansson’s production company is also on board, with Johansson (pictured above as her Marvel character, Black Widow) potentially starring once she has a chance to review the script.
The plot for the movie is being kept under wraps, but Deadline reports that it’s pitched as “What Lies Beneath meets The Sixth Sense.” That suggests a strong supernatural element, as 2000’s What Lies Beneath sees a ghost haunting a couple played by Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer for reasons, and 1999’s The Sixth Sense features a kid who can see dead people (one of whom we don’t know are dead until close to the end of the movie).
The project is still in its very early days, obviously—there’s not even a script yet!—but with Johansson attached and the associated buzz around the auction, odds are slightly better that this will make its way to a screen near you sometime in the next few years.
