'The Season Of Passage': Mike Flanagan Directing Christopher Pike Adaptation

When it comes to the glory days of young adult horror novels, there's Christopher Pike and then there's everyone else. Pike wrote incredibly weird, batshit crazy scary books for younger readers, and while Hollywood had dipped into the work of his contemporary R.L. Stine, Pike's work has been sorely underrepresented on the screen. But that's about to change, thanks to Mike Flanagan. Not only is Flanagan adapting Pike's The Midnight Club into a Netflix series, but he's now signed on to turn Pike's adult novel The Season of Passage into a movie for Universal.

Most of Christopher Pike's work was marketed as YA fiction, but he also occasionally wrote stuff directly for adults as well. One such adult novel was The Season of Passage, published in 1992, which focused on a manned mission to Mars. And now it's becoming a movie courtesy of Mike Flanagan, the filmmaker behind Doctor Sleep. This isn't Flanagan's first Christopher Pike adaptation, either – he also turned Pike's book The Midnight Club into an upcoming Netflix series. "This project has been a dream of mine since I was a teenager," Flanagan said of The Season of Passage on Twitter.

Here's the official book synopsis for The Season of Passage, which describes the tale as "A haunting and unforgettable blend of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and suspense":

Dr. Lauren Wagner was a celebrity. She was involved with the most exciting adventure mankind had ever undertaken: a manned expedition to Mars. The whole world admired and respected her.

But Lauren knew fear. Inside – voices entreating her to love them. Outside – the mystery of the missing group that had gone before her. The dead group.

But were they simply dead? Or something else?

Flanagan will write the Season of Passage script with James Flanagan, and produce with his Intrepid Pictures producing partner Trevor Macy. Melinda Nishioka and Christopher Pike will serve as executive producers. Pike's books are weird and unique, and while they were often billed as horror, they encapsulated a wide variety of weird genres. It'll be interesting to see how his work translates to the screen. Having Flanagan in charge will certainly help, as the filmmaker has proven again and again that he knows what he's doing. In addition to the Doctor Sleep movie, Flanagan is also behind the Netflix shows The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor, as well as the feature films Oculus, Ouija: Origin of Evil, Gerald's Game, and the upcoming Netflix series Midnight Mass, which, despite its title, isn't related to The Midnight Club.