According to Deadline, Spyglass Media Group has successfully acquired the film rights to author Elizabeth Bear’s sci-fi short story titled Covenant with 10 Cloverfield Lane scribes Josh Campbell and Matt Stuecken attached to pen the screenplay. The story was first published in 2015 as part of Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer’s short story collection Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, which you can purchase by clicking here.
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Covenant follows the story of a former serial killer who has been sentenced to a mind repairing procedure which will cure his psychopathic tendencies to kill. However, this process not only changes his brain, but also transforms him into a whole different person which ultimately resulted into him ending up in the same situation as his past victims.
Here’s an excerpt from the story which you can now read via Slate:
“It’s not psychopathy you’re remanded for,” she said. “It’s murder.”
“Mind control,” he said.
“Mind repair,” she said. “You can’t be sentenced to the medical procedure. But you can volunteer. It’s usually interpreted as evidence of remorse and desire to be rehabilitated. Your sentencing judge will probably take that into account.”
“God,” he said. “I’d rather have a bullet in the head than a fucking computer.”
“They haven’t used bullets in a long time,” she said. She shrugged, as if it were nothing to her either way. “It was lethal injection or the gas chamber. Now it’s rightminding. Or it’s the rest of your life in an 8-by-12 cell. You decide.”
“I can beat it.”
“Beat rightminding?”
Point to me.
“What if I can beat it?”
“The success rate is a hundred percent. Barring a few who never woke up from anesthesia.” She treated herself to a slow smile. “If there’s anybody whose illness is too intractable for this particular treatment, they must be smart enough to keep it to themselves. And smart enough not to get caught a second time.”
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The Covenant film will be produced by Arts District Entertainment’s Roger Birnbaum and Michael Besman with Chris Stone set to oversee the project in behalf of Spyglass. In addition, filmmaker Eli Roth (Hostel, The House with a Clock in Its Walls) has reportedly signed on to produce the sci-fi thriller.
