‘The Equalizer’ Producer Tony Eldridge Takes Film Rights To Hailey Piper’s Horror Novel ‘A Light Most Hateful’
EXCLUSIVE: Producer Tony Eldridge (The Equalizer films) of Lonetree Entertainment has optioned film rights to Bram Stoker Award-winning author Hailey Piper’s new horror novel A Light Most Hateful, which Titan Books recently acquired at a competitive auction.
A Light Most Hateful is billed as a terrifying survival horror full of haunting friendships in which the female experience turns monstrous. The story focuses on Olivia, who having fled home three years prior is stuck in a dead-end job in nowhere Chapel Hill, PA with her best friend Sunflower. That’s until a night storm crashes into town with a mind-bending monster in tow. If Olivia’s going to survive the night to someday reconcile with her parents, she needs to dodge residents enslaved by the storm’s otherworldly powers and find Sunflower. But as the night strains friendships and reality itself, Olivia suspects the storm, and its monster, may have more to do with Sunflower than anything else.
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“Edgy and scary as hell, Hailey Piper’s dark tale blasts the reader down a twisted rabbit hole of shifting realities and shatters mirror after mirror,” said Eldridge. “We are thrilled to have the opportunity to work with one of the most unique and imaginative voices in contemporary horror.”
“I’m so jazzed to be working with Tony Eldridge!” added Piper. “He brings a wealth of enthusiasm and care to this story, putting A Light Most Hateful in most experienced hands.”
Piper is a trans author whose work often spotlights LGBTQIA+ characters, such as Yaya Betancourt in her 2021 Bram Stoker-winning Queen of Teeth, which won the prize for Best First Novel. Other works from the scribe include The Worm and His Kings, Your Mind Is a Terrible Thing, Unfortunate Elements of My Anatomy, Benny Rose the Cannibal King, The Possession of Natalie Glasgow and No Gods for Drowning.
Eldridge’s Lonetree Entertainment developed and produced The Equalizer film series starring Denzel Washington, which has a third installment currently in the works. The company is also producing the feature The War Magician, starring two-time Oscar nominee Benedict Cumberbatch (The Power of the Dog), with Colin Trevorrow (Jurassic World franchise) set to direct.
Piper is represented by Lane Heymont at The Tobias Literary Agency.
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