Universal and Amblin have picked up a hot spec from Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, the prolific idea generators behind A Quiet Place.
Like everything with the duo, plot details are being kept in a soundproof room, but it is said to be a high concept sci-fi movie that they will direct.
Steven Spielberg, coming off of last weekend’s Disclosure Day, will produce via Amblin Entertainment with Kristie Macosko Krieger and Holly Bario. Beck and Woods will also produce via Beck/Woods along with Julia Glausi, their banner’s head of film and TV.
Beck and Woods are longtime friends from Iowa who were propelled to mainstream success in 2018 thanks to their spec A Quiet Place, which Paramount bought and made into the hit film starring Emily Blunt and John Krasinski, who also directed. It launched a lucrative franchise for the studio that spans sequels and spinoffs, and proved how big Beck and Woods’ ideas could become.
Beck and Woods are coming off of the critical and commercial A24 hit Heretic, the psychological thriller starred Hugh Grant as a man who imprisons two Mormon missionaries as forces them to interrogate their faith. It collected $60 million globally on a $10 million budget. Before that, they helmed the sci-fi feature 65 starring Adam Driver for Sony.
In 2024, they spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about spinning multiple plates when it comes to developing projects, with Beck noting they had “this huge science-fiction idea that we’ve been sitting with for 10 or 12 years now, and that idea won’t go away.” Added the filmmaker: “We just love swinging into different sides of the industry pendulum, going from A Quiet Place, this small contained horror idea (Heretic), to 65, which is bigger, but then swinging so far in the opposite direction with verbose dialogue and something really performance centric.”
Beck and Woods are repped by CAA, Anonymous Content and Manatt Phelps & Phillips.
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