Back in April, Let Me In director Matt Reeves signed on to develop and direct The Passage, an adaptation of a 2010 vampire novel by Justin Cronin for Fox 2000, one of many projects the director was lining up for. And now the project has a writer; Heat Vision reports that Jason Keller has been hired to help Reeves work on the script. No actual word on if this is a completely new stab at the screenplay or if the two will just retool John Logan‘s original draft. Keller started in the business with a 2002 TV movie called Big Shot: Confessions of a Campus Bookie, but almost ten years later he has certainly moved up, writing the upcoming Gerard Butler vehicle Machine Gun Preacher and helping to co-write the Relativity Media Snow White adaptation starring Julia Roberts.

The Passage takes place one hundred years in the future, where the human race has slowly morphed into vampires thanks to a government snafu while trying to extend the human life span. This is the first book in Cronin’s planned trilogy of the story, and while the first book was released in 2010, Fox bought the film rights way before then in 2007 because they couldn’t wait for something to exist first. According to this A.V. Club article, The Passage has “elements of The Stand, I Am Legend, and 28 Days Later built right in” as well as “a cinematic cliffhanger on seemingly every other page”. Consider my interest piqued; maybe I’ll get a chance to read this before seeing the movie so I complain how Reeves took a whole bunch of liberties and is totally dumb and junk.

It may be awhile though, as Reeves has also signed on to write and direct an adaptation of the Ray Nelson short story 8 O’Clock in the Morning, a story which was also previous adapted by John Carpenter for They Live. Time will tell which project will take more of Reeves’ attention first. As for Keller, Fox is trying to develop his script called Go Like Hell for a movie of its own.

Matt Reeves’ track record has been pretty good so far as a director. Do you think The Passage will be another notch in his belt or his first creative disaster?