Gary Dauberman's Coin Operated has acquired the rights to Nat Cassidy's horror novella Rest Stop, "with an eye toward developing a feature adaptation," Deadline reported. Cassidy will adapt the screenplay, with Dauberman and Mia Maniscalco producing.
Rest Stop "follows a young musician who finds himself locked inside a gas station bathroom in the middle of the night by an unseen assailant, caught between the horrors on the other side of the door and the horrors rapidly skittering down the walls inside," Deadline noted. The story is part of Cassidy's recently published collection, I Know a Place: Rest Stop and Other Dark Detours.
"I like to describe this novella as Green Room meets Gerald's Game," Cassidy said. "It's the closest thing I've yet written to 'extreme' horror--though, I wouldn't say it goes nearly as hard or gets nearly as bleak as the most extreme 'extreme' horror stories I've read. Regardless, I'm hoping it makes your next visit to a gas station bathroom even scarier than it would otherwise be."
Dauberman added: "Like the junk food aisle at any sketchy gas station on the side of the road, Rest Stop has a little bit of everything (that may or may not kill you). Its relentless pace, psychological torment, heartfelt character moments, and many squirm-inducing sequences make it the rare horror story that has all the ingredients for a perfectly terrifying experience on the big screen."