James Wan may have moved from blood-curdling frighteners to studio blockbusters with the runaway success of Furious 7, but he’s still keeping his fingers on the pulse with the genre, producing another supernatural home-invasion horror in the spirit of Insidious and The Conjuring. Now, young up-and-comer Gabriel Bateman has landed a lead role in said pic, which is titled Lights Out.
David F. Sandberg is directing the film, a feature adaptation of his (terrifying) 2013 short. Lawrence Grey and Eric A. Heisserer are attached as producers, with Heisserer scripting an expansion of Sandberg’s story. Heisserer’s past scripting credits include The Thing, Final Destination 5 and Hours (which he also directed).
In Lights Out, Bateman will play the young son in a family haunted by a supernatural entity that can only be seen in the dark. With everyone at risk, one family member is forced to step up and combat the evil in their home.
Bateman is best known for his role on the CBS series Stalker, in which he played the son of Dylan McDermott’s detective antihero. He’s taking on a key role in Robert Kirkman’s exorcism horror series Outcast, which has been ordered to series by Cinemax, and the young actor also had a supporting role in last year’s Annabelle, so Bateman seems on the cusp of a major breakout in the horror genre. With Wan helping to guide Lights Out to the big screen, this could be the film that cements the young actor as a new horror secret weapon.
