EXCLUSIVE: Director Josh Ruben got off on the right foot early this year, releasing his Screen Gems romantic slasher Heart Eyes to critical acclaim. And now as the year winds down, Ruben has found his next project, attaching to direct the horror film Wilderness Reform for Paramount Pictures.
Based on the 2024 novel by Harrison Query and Matt Query (Old Country), Wilderness Reform is about a wilderness camp for troubled teens that is plagued by mysterious events and disappearances, taking survival and discipline to a frightening extreme.
Lindsey Beer will produce through her production company Lab Brew, which has a first-look deal with the studio, alongside Scott Glassgold through his 12:01 Films. Ruben will oversee a script draft by Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman, the scribes behind M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin.
Grossing over $33 million worldwide upon its pre-Valentine’s Day release, and currently streaming on Netflix, Ruben’s Heart Eyes stars Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding as a pair of coworkers who find themselves on the run on Valentine’s Day, fleeing a masked killer who targets couples and mistakes them for lovers.
Prior to Heart Eyes, Ruben directed a pair of horror comedies released by IFC. The most recent was Werewolves Within, starring Sam Richardson and Milana Vayntrub, which premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Festival and won a Midseason Hollywood Critics Association Award for Best Indie. Prior to that, he made his feature directorial debut with Scare Me, a critically acclaimed indie where he starred opposite Aya Cash and Chris Redd, which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. As an actor, Ruben has also been seen on the Dropout series Make Some Noise, as well as in Season 1 of Shudder/AMC+’s The Creep Tapes opposite Mark Duplass. He is repped by CAA, Artists First, Empirical, and Ginsburg Daniels Kallis.
Lab Brew is the production company of Beer, a filmmaker whose recent directorial debut, Pet Semetary: Bloodlines, which she also wrote, debuted as the number 1 title on Paramount+ and quickly broke the streamer’s record for the most-watched Paramount+ Original Movie. Previously, Beer also wrote and executive produced Sierra Burgess Is a Loser, a modern-day retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac starring Noah Centineo and Shannon Purser that debuted #1 worldwide on Netflix. Other upcoming projects for the company include American Girl with Mattel Films and Paramount Pictures; Hello Kitty, which she wrote and is exec producing for New Line; Sleepy Hollow, which she will write, direct and produce for Paramount; a darker reimagining of The Munsters for television with James Wan, entitled 1313; and an adaptation of the novel Autumn Springs with Tango. Beer is repped by WME, Brillstein, and Gang, Tyre, Ramer.
Glassgold’s 12:01 Films has had a powerful impact on the marketplace since launching in December 2024, setting up one hot package after another based creator-driven IP, including many a short story. He secured the first major sale of the year with After Shock, a Brandon Sklenar earthquake pic set up at Lionsgate, before going on to set up Ripped with Dwayne Johnson, as well as python pic Crush at 20th, Fake Wedding with Lili Reinhart and Code Black with Jake Gyllenhaal at Amazon, Drift with Andy Muschietti at Skydance/Paramount, Earthling with Final Destination: Bloodlines‘ Zach Lipovsky & Adam Stein at Sony, and Fallen Astronaut at Apple. He’s repped by Verve and McKuin Frankel Whitehead.