The Entity Reboot Writers Offer Update on Project Following Fox and Disney Merger

Back in 2015, it was announced that The Conjuring writers Chad and Carey W. Hayes had been tapped to write a remake of the 1982 horror film The Entity, with Conjuring director James Wan set to produce the project, though details on that project in the years since have been relatively sparse. The writers recently confirmed that one reason fans have learned so little about the remake is due to the project being developed for 20th Century Fox, with the studio’s acquisition by The Walt Disney Company understandably complicating things when it comes to developing a film about a woman who claims she was sexually assaulted by a supernatural presence.

“We wrote the movie, we wrote the script. It’s at Fox, and we’re not sure exactly where it’s going to end up yet because as you know, Disney bought Fox,” Carey recently confirmed with ComicBook.com when discussing the 15th anniversary of their film House of Wax. “So there’s a lot of projects in transition, what are we going to do with those type of movies?”

The events were originally chronicled in the 1978 novel The Entity, which was based on the real-life reports of Doris Bither, before being adapted into a Barbara Hershey-starring film. Understandably, the concept might seem too graphic for the family-friendly Disney to develop, but Chad isn’t giving up hope on the project moving forward at some point.

“Is The Entity considered a Disney film?” Chad posited. “You don’t know. But there’s been talk of it. We’re very proud of the script. It turned out wonderful and was just a lot of fun. And we also had Roy Lee, who’s one of the producers on it, who did The Ring and The Grudge. And I mean, he’s done The Departed. He’s just done so many good things that … we had a lot of talented people surrounding that. And I think it’ll find a life at some point, to be honest with you.”

As if the concept of the material wasn’t enough to cast doubt on the project moving forward with Disney, the entertainment industry and culture surrounding any type of sexual assault is a lot different than what it was in the early ’80s, with the writers noting what their approach to the adaptation was.

“We really jumped at the opportunity, and we made the remake far more plausible, to be honest with you,” Chad confessed. “It didn’t have any real big gadgetry and stuff like that. But that was a big challenge. How do you present a woman who is sexually abused by a spirit? And in our mind, we wrote it, how does a woman take her power back? How does she deal with something that she felt she had no control over?”

Carey added, “How do you confront your rapist?”

Stay tuned for details on the possible future of The Entity remake.

Would you like to see the project move forward? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!