Sam Raimi Is Producing a 99 Nights in the Forest Movie

Sam Raimi is producing a feature adaptation of 99 Nights in the Forest, the Roblox survival horror game, for 20th Century Studios. The Hollywood Reporter broke the news Thursday, with Deadline following. Josh Cooley is writing the script.

Raimi produces alongside Rob Tapert, his partner going back to the original Evil Dead. Romel Adam of Evil Dead Rise executive produces with Jose Cañas of Play Dead and the game’s three creators, Alec Kieft, Matthew Hufton and Cameron Angland of Grandma’s Favourite Games. No director is attached, and no release date has been set.

What the Game Actually Does to You

The setup is austere in a way that horror people will recognize immediately. You are dropped in a forest with almost nothing, four children are missing, and the sun is going down. Survive the nights, gather what you can, keep the camp standing.

Then the forest starts sending things. The Deer is the headline threat and works on jump scares. The Owl turns up after night five, moves faster, and cannot be killed at all, which is a design choice with real teeth in a game that otherwise lets you fight back. The Ram charges through the volcano biome and takes trees down with it. Cultists raid the camp, and they get worse the longer you last. It is The Ritual by way of a crafting menu, and it has worked on an almost incomprehensible scale: per Bloody Disgusting’s report, the game ranks as the seventh most-played title in Roblox history with nearly 26 billion lifetime visits since its launch last year.

Why Josh Cooley Is a Smarter Pick Than It Looks

Cooley has never written a horror film. He won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature directing Toy Story 4, was Oscar-nominated for the Inside Out screenplay, and most recently directed Transformers One. On paper that is a strange fit for a story about cultists and an unkillable owl.

It is not, though. 99 Nights in the Forest is played overwhelmingly by kids, and its horror runs on separation, the dark, and something outside that wants in — which is the exact emotional machinery Cooley has spent a career operating. Pixar has always understood that children’s films are frightening films with the fear pointed somewhere useful. Handing this one to the person who wrote Inside Out is a bet that the adaptation will be about the missing children rather than about the deer.

Raimi and Tapert Keep Betting on Adaptations

Ghost House Pictures, the company Raimi and Tapert founded together in 2002, has spent more than twenty years turning lean premises into things that hurt: The Grudge, Boogeyman, Don’t Breathe, Evil Dead Rise. Bringing in Romel Adam, who worked on Evil Dead Rise, suggests they are not treating this as a soft-edged brand exercise.

The timing helps. Video game horror has stopped being a punchline this year, and iHorror has watched it happen in real time with the first reactions to Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil and with Netflix picking up a Diablo animated series. A Roblox game getting a major studio, an Oscar-winning writer and Sam Raimi is the next escalation, and there is no longer an obvious reason to assume it will be bad.

One caution for anyone searching this out: a video billed as the film’s official trailer is circulating on YouTube, and it is not one. The picture has a writer and no director. When a real date lands, it goes on our upcoming horror movies calendar.