EXCLUSIVE: Amblin Partners has acquired the film rights to Upgrade, the upcoming sci-fi/thriller from bestselling author Blake Crouch. Crouch will adapt the screenplay and is also attached to exec produce. Sources say the auction was highly competitive with several other studios and streamers in the mix before Amblin ultimately won the bid.
The novel follows a brother and sister, both unwittingly enhanced with genetically engineered upgrades, who square off against each other in a dangerous battle of conflicting schemes to save humanity from itself. Upgrade will be published by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House, on July 12. Jeb Brody, Amblin’s President of Production, and Lauren Abrahams, EVP of Production, will oversee for the studio.
Crouch is an international bestselling author whose work has been translated into forty languages and has sold millions of copies. Past screen adaptations of his work include Wayward Pines, which he executive produced alongside M. Night Shyamalan for Fox; and Good Behavior for TNT, which starred Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery. Upcoming, Crouch’s bestselling novel, Recursion, sold to Shonda Rhimes and Matt Reeves at Netflix, and will be developed as a TV and movie franchise, and Crouch is also adapting and executive producing Summer Frost.
He is represented by Angela Cheng Caplan of Cheng Caplan Company, David Hale Smith of InkWell Management, and attorney Joel VanderKloot of VanderKloot Law.
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