Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Buys Thriller Novel ‘The Apartment’ for Film Adaptation

20/02/2016 - Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners has acquired movie rights to S.L. Grey’s upcoming thriller novel The Apartment. The project has not yet been set up with a producer. The story centers on a couple struggling to move on after armed robbers break into their home and brutalize them. The duo makes a house swap in Paris with a couple they meet online but the supposedly luxurious apartment is run-down and they’re unable to contact the couple. They return home after a series of increasingly unsettling events, with neither able to shake the feeling that there’s now something sinister about their own home. Macmillan will publish the book in July. The pen name “S.L. Grey” is a collaboration between U.K.-based Sarah Lotz and South African writer Louis Greenberg. S.L. Grey novels include “Underground,” “The New Girl,” “The Mall” and “The Ward.” Amblin Partners was founded in December as a successor company to DreamWorks by Spielberg, Jeff Skoll of Participant Media, Anil Ambani of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group and Darren Throop of Entertainment One. Distribution of movies shifted from Disney to Universal. Variety reported on Dec. 30 that Spielberg is putting up $50 million of his own money and Participant is contributing $200 million. The news about “The Apartment” was first reported by the Tracking Board.

(VARIETY)