Veteran producer Edward R. Pressman has optioned the rights to Archaia Entertainment’s graphic novel Feeding Ground.
Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, a former personal assistant to such directors as Martin Scorsese and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and now burgeoning director, is set to helm the horror thriller, and Carlos Coto has been tapped adapt it for the screen.
Created by Swifty Lang, Michael Lapinski and Chris Mangun, the story tells of an illegal immigrant trafficker — a “coyote,” in cross-border parlance — who is forced to smuggle his own family into America after his young brother runs afoul of a local gangster. With the cartel on his heels and U.S. Border Patrol agents bearing down from the other side, the family is trapped in the no-man’s land known as the Devil’s Highway and discovers the entire party is being stalked by supernatural creatures.
Feeding Ground was published as a hardcover graphic novel last year to strong reviews and is one of the few to be released simultaneously in English and Spanish.
To keep an authentic air, much of the dialogue from the Latino characters will be in Spanish, with the American side speaking English.
“Feeding Ground is an intense and terrifying thriller with a subtle but pointed commentary on immigration in modern America,” said Pressman. “The graphic novel is so cinematic in nature — as soon as I read it, I knew we could make a film that would resonate with a wide audience.”