BIRD BOX
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THE JOURNEY FROM BOOK TO FILM
The resemblance of the fi lm’s premise to that of M Night Shyamalan’s The Happening is uncanny,
and something that worried Josh Malerman, the author of the Bird Box novel. In Shyamalan’s fi lm,
humanity is threatened by a wave of mass suicides. On top of this, another fi lm worried Malerman:
in John Hillcoat’s The Road, a father and son try to survive in a hostile post-apocalyptic world.
Malerman had already written the rough draft of his novel when the two fi lms came out, and he
understandably feared that his novel would be forgotten in favour of more high profi le disaster-
themed entertainment. In reality, Bird Box was positively received, even compared to the work of
Stephen King. Film rights were soon acquired and Andy Muschietti, who shot the 2017 adaptation of
King’s IT, was set to direct before Bier took over.