James Wan, Netflix, horror – three words that are sure to excite anyone with a thirst for the paranormal.
Wan, whose credits include powerhouse franchises like Saw, Insidious and The Conjuring – the latter of which also spawned an entire mini-universe of its own – has joined forces with Netflix for a new series based on found-footage horror podcast Archive 81.
Discussing Film has the scoop (h/t Dread Central), confirming that James Wan will produce the spooky project alongside Rebecca Sonnenshine (The Boys, Outcast) and Paul Harris Boardman (Deliver Us From Evil, The Day The Earth Stood Still). Daniel Powell and Marc Sollinger, the minds behind the Archive 81 podcast series, are also involved in a producing capacity.
In a nutshell, the found-footage audio saga chronicles the story of Dan, a solitary archivist who works at a remote facility where he has been tasked with cataloging hundreds of hours of old audiotape.
Meanwhile, the official logline gets very dark, very quickly…
Dan’s employer is the City of New York’s Housing Historical Society… or so he thinks. Many of the recorded tapes appear to consist of old interviews between a social worker named Melody Pendrass and the residents of a mysterious apartment tower block known as The Visser Building. It’s not clear what Melody’s looking for in her interviews, but the more tenants she talks to, the creepier things get. As Dan probes deeper into the tapes and the mysterious origins of the Visser building, Melody’s story starts to reveal unsettling facts about the archive, his employers, and even the nature of the physical world we live in.
He’s dabbled in cinematic universes (see: The Conjuring) and big budget blockbusters (i.e. Aquaman), and now, it seems James Wan is hoping to develop a Netflix series based on something from left-field: a found footage horror podcast called Archive 81. And if that isn’t enough to stir your curiosity, we don’t know what will.
Elsewhere, we know that Wan is also developing a new entry in The Conjuring series – entitled The Devil Made Me Do It, it’ll be with us this September – before he revisits the world of Atlantic for Aquaman 2. Expect that one to arrive in 2022… you know, assuming the Coronavirus pandemic doesn’t have a knock-on effect for the entire DCEU.
