Posted in: Blumhouse, Horror, Movies, Universal | Tagged: blumhouse, film, horror, Night Swim

Night Swim Director on Turning the Horror Short into a Feature Film

The director attached to the upcoming Blumhouse movie Night Swim is explaining how the horror short transitioned into a feature film.

The 2014 short film Night Swim is just a few months away from becoming a feature film nearly a decade after its initial conception. And considering that isn't typically a common occurrence for short films (though there was Lights Out), fans might be wondering how the title worked its way into the ever-evolving Blumhouse universe. Now, the film's director is shedding light on the Hollywood-funded upgrade coming in January 2024.

How Night Swim Became a Blumhouse Movie

When speaking with Coming Soon about the upcoming Blumhouse film Night Swim, director Bryce McGuire was asked about the early stages of its feature film transition, divulging, "So that short, we made that short a long time ago, eight years ago now. It got sent around town. A lot of people were interested and, you know, wanted to know what the concept was, but the feature was, and for a long time, I just was like, I'm not, I don't know, I think a short's a short."

McGuire continues, "And then I had this idea that kind of broke all that open for me, and it was like, no, this has to be a feature. This is a feature's worth story. There's a feature-level mystery here, feature-level concept that I knew then I could take that pitch out. So basically had the short, had a treatment, had a pitch, and we came and pitched to a bunch of studios, like every major studio in town kind of had a bit of like a competitive situation where multiple studios were interested and then ultimately landed exactly where it was supposed to land with Atomic Monster. And [James Wan] won initially, and then Blumhouse joined forces in the last couple years to make that happen. So that's the best right there."

The film's official synopsis explains, "Based on the acclaimed 2014 short film by Rod Blackhurst and Bryce McGuire, the film stars Wyatt Russell (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) as Ray Waller, a former major league baseball player forced into early retirement by a degenerative illness who moves into a new home with his concerned wife Eve (Oscar® nominee Kerry Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin), teenage daughter Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle, this fall's The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes) and young son Elliot (Gavin Warren, Fear the Walking Dead). Secretly hoping, against the odds, to return to pro ball, Ray persuades Eve that the new home's shimmering backyard swimming pool will be fun for the kids and provide physical therapy for him. But a dark secret in the home's past will unleash a malevolent force that will drag the family under into the depths of inescapable terror."

Night Swim will be released in theaters on January 5, 2024.

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