Netflix Buys Horror Pic ‘Eli’ From Paramount
Similar to how Paramount unloaded The Cloverfield Paradox to Netflix, the studio has sold all global rights for its Paramount Players horror film Eli to Netflix.
Ciaran Foy (Sinister 2) directed the movie which centers around a boy receiving treatment for his auto-immune disorder who discovers that the house he’s living isn’t as safe as he thought.
David Chirchirillo, Ian Goldberg and Richard Naing wrote the script. Intrepid Pictures’ Trevor Macy produced Eli with John Zaozirny with Melinda Nishioka as EP.
Charlie Shotwell, Lili Taylor, Max Martini and Sadie Sink star. Eli was a 2015 Black List horror script and Paramount was originally planning to release the film on Jan. 4 before undating it a few weeks ago.
Paramount also sold overseas to Alex Garland’s sci-fi thriller Annihilation, thought kept domestic which didn’t take off with $32M at the box office. Recently, Warner Bros. spared any headlines over a box office bomb by unloading Andy Serkis’ much-delayed Jungle Book tale Mowgli to Netflix. The thing with Eli is that it wasn’t an expensive movie at an estimated $11M. What occurred we hear is that the pic’s champion, former Paramount Players head Brian Robbins, left to run Nickelodeon, and in the wake of that, Paramount marketing couldn’t wrap their heads around selling Eli despite great test scores.
Deadline confirmed the story about Eli Collider first reported the news.
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