Paramount Players wants everyone to be very quiet.
The company has preemptively picked up a horror pitch titled Shhh from moviemakers Gustavo Cooper and Ben Powell. The duo will co-write the script, with Cooper attached to direct.
Matt Kaplan, whose Ace Entertainment has a first-look deal with Paramount Players, is on board to produce.
The Paramount studio division is being mum on details, but the project is whispered to be a high-concept horror thriller set in a high school and in the vein tonally of The Ring and the Denzel Washington supernatural thriller Fallen.
Kaplan has several movies wrapped, including the Mary J. Blige horror pic Body Cam and Noah Centineo’s The Stand-In, and is prepping the action-thriller Heroine starring Winston Duke.
Powell wrote the 2012 thriller The Aggression Scale as well as The Vessel, a supernatural thriller now in preproduction.
Cooper has made several shorts that have gained traction on the festival circuit. He and Powell are developing a skateboarding thriller titled Wild in the Street from Snowfort Pictures that is set up at XYZ Films.
Cooper is repped by Zero Gravity Management and Kramer Holcomb. Powell is repped by Zero Gravity and Nelson Davis.
Matt Dines will oversee Shhh for Paramount Players.
Oct. 17, 11:40 a.m. Updated to correct which Fallen movie the Shhh project is tonally in the vein of.
