Lyrical Media Acquires Reddit/NoSleep Short Story ‘Purgatory Games’; Bryan Edward Hill To Adapt For Screen

Anthony D'Alessandro
Updated ·2 min read
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EXCLUSIVE: Lyrical Media has snapped up Sam Haysom’s short story Purgatory Games which Titans and Ash vs. Evil Dead scribe Bryan Edward Hill will adapt into a feature film.

In Purgatory Games, when a mysterious narrator receives a USB drive from an unknown source containing videos and transcripts of six strangers trapped in an underground bunker with unusual rules to gain their freedom, an investigation begins into this secret, disturbing experiment. The project has been billed as Ring meets Squid Game.

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The big screen take of the short story from the viral Reddit/NoSleep thread will be produced by Alex Black and Natalie Sellers on behalf of Lyrical Media with Brian Kavanaugh Jones and Fred Berger producing for Automatik. Hill and Gemma Levinson will also serve as EPs.

Hill is an African-American creator working across film, television, and comics. He has five features in various stages of active deep development including his own comic, Chariot, which he is adapting into a feature film for Warner Bros. Pictures and 21 Laps; Power Rangers which he is rewriting for eOne/AllSpark, Black for Studio 8 and Just Cause for Constantin Film. He is also adapting the comic, Bitter Root, for Legendary, which has Regina King attached to direct, and the book, Revenge of Magic, for Stampede. On the television side, Hill serves as Supervising Producer on Greg Berlanti’s DC series Titans and recently sold the spin-off, Red Hood, to Max. He previously wrote on Starz’s Ash vs. Evil Dead. Hill is also the voice behind several comics, writing for Marvel, DC, Top Cow, Boom, and Vertigo. He’s repped by Verve and Heroes & Villains. Haysom by Verve, Circle of Confusion, and attorney Alex Contratto. Lyrical Media is repped by UTA.

This short story marks the tenth sale of a short story in this space in a short time for Verve. A few weeks ago, Verve sold I Am Not Alone to Netflix with Jessica Chastain to star and Misha Green to write and direct, with Scott Glassgold’s Ground Control producing alongside Simon Kinberg and Craig Flores. The month prior, they packaged The Occupant for New Line Cinema, with Barbarian’s Zach Cregger and Roy Lee producing also alongside Glassgold. Other short story sales include My Wife & I Bought a Ranch and We Used to Live Here to Netflix, Caretaker to Universal with Sydney Sweeney to star, I Think My Mother-In-Law Is Trying to Kill Me to Sony 3000 and Wilderness Reform to Paramount. 

Lyrical Media, based in New York and Los Angeles, is a startup, cross-platform financier, developer, and producer, creating content across film, television, video games, podcasts, and graphic novels across horror, sci-fi, comedy, action and unconventional drama.

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