Following the news this past Halloween season that Scott Derrickson will direct an adaptation of Joe Hill's The Black Phone for Blumhouse and Universal (from a screenplay Derrickson co-wrote with C. Robert Cargill), it's now been announced that Blumhouse is teaming up with Derrickson and Cargill’s production company Crooked Highway for two-year first-look television deal, with three projects already in development:

Press Release: LOS ANGELES - December 14, 2020 – Blumhouse announced today that Crooked Highway, Scott Derrickson (Bermuda, Doctor Strange, Sinister, The Exorcism of Emily Rose) and C. Robert Cargill’s (Bermuda, Doctor Strange, Sinister) production company, has signed a first-look television deal. Under the new 2-year deal, the recently formed production company will develop projects for the television company. Sherryl Clark (Cloverfield, Morning Glory, Blackbird) has been named President of Production for Crooked Highway.

“I’m thrilled to welcome Scott, Cargill, and Sherryl into the Blumhouse family, to work with us in television,” said Jason Blum. We have had a lot of success collaborating in film, and they’ve brought some great material in to develop that we can’t wait to get in front of fans.”

“It was an easy, natural progression for us to collaborate further with Jason in television, given our success with Blumhouse on the feature side,” said Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill.

Crooked Highway has several television projects in development with Blumhouse, including:

  • Full Body Burden: Inspired by author Kristen Iversen’s book of the same name, this is the true story of a deadly government secret hidden in plain sight: the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant just outside of Denver, CO.
  • Midnight Radio: An off-the-grid radio host begins to piece together the connections between various supernatural experiences described by his callers.
  • The Devil’s Detective: A human investigator navigates the intricate bureaucracies of Hell to solve high-profile murder cases amid a populace of angels, demons, and the damned. Based on the novel of the same name by Simon Kurt Unsworth.

Crooked Highway is producing Derrickson’s recently announced, upcoming film The Black Phone, alongside the features team at Blumhouse, for Universal Pictures. The film is based on a short story by Joe Hill that was adapted by Derrickson and Cargill. Earlier this year, Derrickson and Cargill served as executive producers of the film My Valentine, written and directed by Maggie Levin, which was part of Blumhouse Television’s Into the Dark anthology series for Hulu. Crooked Highway will also be producing Levin's Retrograde, a sci-fi time-manipulation thriller. Derrickson and Cargill famously collaborated with Blumhouse on the Sinister franchise, and the two films grossed over $135 million at the worldwide box office. In October, Sinister was named the scariest horror movie of all time according to a study conducted by broadbandchoices.

Sherryl Clark served as Head of Film for Bad Robot for over five years, where she produced Cloverfield and Morning Glory and oversaw the Mission Impossible and Star Trek franchises. Clark also ran her own production company, Busted Shark, and most recently was President of Production for The H Collective (Brightburn, The Parts You Lose).

Crooked Highway is represented by WME and Brillstein Entertainment Partners.

About Blumhouse:
Blumhouse is known for pioneering a new model of studio filmmaking: producing high-quality micro-budget films and provocative television series. Regarded as the driving force in the horror renaissance, Blumhouse has produced over 150 movies and television series with theatrical grosses amounting to over $4.8 billion. The company has produced iconic, genre, film franchises like Halloween, Paranormal Activity, The Purge, and prolific films like Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man; Glass, The Visit and Split from M. NIght Shyamalan; Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman; Get Out from Jordan Peele; among several others. Blum’s television company operates in horror programming - with streaming anthology series like Welcome to the Blumhouse for Amazon and Into the Dark for Hulu - and has also expanded beyond genre with provocative and acclaimed scripted and unscripted series and documentaries, such as The Good Lord Bird, starring Academy Award nominee Ethan Hawke, for Showtime; The Loudest Voice, starring Golden Globe winner Russell Crowe for Showtime; A Wilderness of Error (FX); The Jinx for HBO; A Secret Love, from executive producer Ryan Murphy, for Netflix; and lauded HBO series Sharp Objects, starring Amy Adams and Patricia Clarkson, among others.

[Photo Credit: Above photo of Scott Derrickson by Gage Skidmore and above photo of C. Robert Cargill by Jessica Cargill.]

  • Derek Anderson
    About the Author - Derek Anderson

    Raised on a steady diet of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Derek has been fascinated with fear since he first saw ForeverWare being used on an episode of Eerie, Indiana.

    When he’s not writing about horror as the Senior News Reporter for Daily Dead, Derek can be found daydreaming about the Santa Carla Boardwalk from The Lost Boys or reading Stephen King and Brian Keene novels.