Matt Reeves Bringing More to They Live-like 8 O’Clock in the Morning

Steve Barton   |  

Apr 11, 2011

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So the question beckons … if two different movies are based upon the same short story, does that make the latest telling of said story a remake or another beast entirely? Kind of makes your head hurt, no?

Deadline reports that Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Let Me In) has signed on at Universal Pictures to write and direct a feature based on the famed Ray Nelson short story “8 O’Clock in the Morning”. Strike Entertainment partners Eric Newman and Marc Abraham are producing.

The story is about a man who awakens one morning with the crystal-clear realization that we are surrounded daily by the presence of aliens that are controlling society. It was owned by the studio because it was used as the basis for the 1988 John Carpenter film They Live, in which aliens were discovered via the use of special glasses. None of that is being used here, and according to the powers-that-be the film is not being considered a remake.

“I saw an opportunity to do a movie that was very point-of-view driven, a psychological science fiction thriller that explores this guy’s nightmare,” Reeves tells Deadline. “There could be a desperate love story at the center of this. Carpenter took a satirical view of the material and the larger political implication that we’re being controlled. I am very drawn to the emotional side, the nightmare experience with the paranoia of Invasion of the Body Snatchers or a Roman Polanski-style film.”

Look for more on this one soon!

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