BIGFOOT THRILLER DEVOLUTION IN CAPABLE HANDS OF KIWI DIRECTOR

Based upon the slick visuals and chillingly deft touch in building the suspense in his Sundance 2021 hit Coming Home in the Dark, it was announced in June that director James Ashcroft would helm Legendary Pictures’ prestige horror property, Devolution. An adatation of the blockbuster bestseller Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre by World War Z author Max Brooks, it represents a high-profile Hollywood debut for the New Zealand-born filmmaker and his writing partner, Eli Kent.

While on the promotional circuit for Coming Home in the Dark in late 2021, Ashcroft offered up some insight into how the project was developing. Full disclosure - your correspondent is a Sasquatch obsessive and Brooks' book, which chronicles a Bigfoot pack attack deep in America’s forested heartland, was the literary highpoint of 2020.    

“Unlike you, I never had a lot of interest in anything Sasquatch, certainly wasn’t expecting to fall in love with Sasquatch lore” Ashcroft laughs, speaking via Zoom from his Wellington home, “but now I am utterly obsessed and fascinated by all things Sasquatch! I am only just getting into this magnificent world of Bigfoot and his cousins across the world.” (Pictured, right: Ashcroft, on the set of Coming Home in the Dark)

He quickly points out that, like most great horror tales, there is meaning in the monster’s presence. “Max has written a story that the Sasquatch are only a part of, a mirror to what the story is really about,” he explains. Brooks’ narrative focuses on the small, isolated community of Greenloop, an eco-centric commune who suddenly are cut off from the rest of the world after a volcanic eruption. In addition to lacking outdoor survival skills and resources, they soon find themselves the focus of a group of hungry, desperate, highly intelligent Sasquatch. 

“This is a story of human arrogance and hubris, that assumption that we can go into someone else’s house and do as we wish,” says Ashcroft. “When that tenuous link to civilization is cut, what happens to us then? Then there’s the human drama of watching this eco-community implode, a group of people that then has to deal with the environment’s apex predator, the Sasquatch.”

Brooks’ novel was critically acclaimed upon release and spent several weeks on US bestseller lists. While acknowledging its B-monster movie premise was part of the fun, literary critic for The Gaurdian U.K., Neil McRobert, also pointed out that Brooks’ novel made for a challenging read in the time of COVID. “The true terror for a post-pandemic reader,” he said in his June 2020 review, “is in the grounded reality of how victims of disaster can be overlooked and how thin the veneer of civility and technology is revealed to be in the face of grand social disruption.”

The big-screen adaptation means the project is coming full-circle from its origins. Brooks had first planned to write a screenplay and successfully pitched to Legendary. But soon the project cooled and slipped out of development until Brooks re-approached Legendary founder Thomas Tull for the novel rights. (Pictured, above: Max Brooks)   

No casting or production start date has been announced yet, but Ashcroft and Kent are moving quickly through the screenplay drafts. “I’m really loving it! It’s a really wild ride,” says Ashcroft. “We are thinking of it as sort of The Poseidon Adventure, meets a more adult Jurassic Park, meets Straw Dogs.”