H Collective Lands Aaron W. Sala Horror Spec ‘The Beast’

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EXCLUSIVE: In a preemptive mid-six figure deal, The H Collective has acquired the Aaron W. Sala’s horror thriller spec The Beast. Busted Shark Productions’ Sherryl Clark (Cloverfield, Super 8) will produce alongside The H Collective, who will also fully finance the feature. After a passenger plane goes down in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, a woman finds herself washed ashore and the sole survivor on a mysterious island where she faces her worst fears.

A search for a director and actress is underway by Clark and The H Collective, latter of which is currently in production on an untitled horror feature produced by James Gunn and starring Elizabeth Banks, and in post-production on Christopher Cantwell’s The Parts You Lose, starring Aaron Paul, Scoot McNairy and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, with Mark Johnson’s Gran Via producing. The H Collective recently formed a management arm with Chinese stars Li Bingbing and Karry Wang among the firm’s first clients.

“I was so enthralled by Aaron’s script that within 24 hours of reading we were aggressively pursuing the rights before it had the opportunity to be shopped around town,” said H Collective CEO Nic Crawley. “Aaron is truly a fantastic screenwriter and I anticipate we’re going to see much more from him.”

Said Clark: “The Beast is a crowd-pleasing genre film with a social conscience. That combination is what got me excited about finding a like-minded home for this project. This is a tour de force performance piece for an actress in the vein ofGravity.”

The Beast recently advanced to the Top 10 of the 2017 Launch Pad Feature Competition (LPFC). Sala’s script The Fifth Stage which made the LPFC in 2015.

Sala is repped by Verve, Madhouse and attorney Jeffrey Frankel.