‘The People Under The Stairs’ Reboot Being Penned By Ezra Claytan Daniels For Monkeypaw & Universal

EXCLUSIVE: Doom Patrol and Night Sky scribe Ezra Claytan Daniels has signed on to write the screenplay for The People Under the Stairs, a reboot of the 1991 Wes Craven horror movie, for Monkeypaw Productions through their deal at Univeral.

Monkeypaw Productions will produce the film with Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld serving as producers. The project is still in early development.

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The original Universal Studios movie, which Craven wrote and directed, and produced with Shep Gordon follows young Fool (Brandon Adams) who breaks into the home of his family’s greedy and uncaring landlords. There he discovers a disturbing scenario where incestuous adult siblings have mutilated a number of boys and kept them imprisoned under stairs in their large, creepy house. As Fool attempts to flee before the psychopaths can catch him, he meets their daughter, Alice (A.J. Langer), who has been spared any extreme discipline by her deranged parents. Fool and Alice attempt to escape.

Daniels most recently contributed to Jordan Peele’s NYT Bestselling short story anthology, Out There Screaming. The multidisciplinary artist is the creator of the Eisner, Harvey, and Ignatz Award-nominated graphic novels, Upgrade Soul and BTTM FDRS. Upgrade Soul was adapted into an Audible original series and is currently in development as a film with a AAA director.  He also wrote a segment for the film Horror Noire. He was also Executive Story Editor on Doom Patrol and staffed on Amazon’s Night Sky.

Daniels is represented by Paradigm Talent Agency, Aperture Entertainment and Nelson Davis LLP.

Peele is represented by CAA. and Yorn, Levine, Barnes, Krintzman, Rubenstein, Kohner, Endlich & Gellman

Peele won an Oscar for Original Screenplay in 2018 for Get Out, which counted four Oscar nominations including Best Picture. Peele’s feature directorial canon which includes Get Out, Us, and Nope have grossed altogether close to $683M at the global box office.

At the present time, Monkeypaw has two movies dated for 2024: an untitled horror thriller production on Sept. 27 and Peele’s fourth feature directorial on Christmas Day.

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