Matt Reeves set to direct vampire adaptation The Passage

Cloverfield and Let Me In director Matt Reeves has been tapped to develop and direct an adaptation of Justin Cronin's novel The Passage , according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Only last week it was announced that Reeves would be directing a remake of John Carpenter's They Live (or he'd be readapting the source story 8 O'Clock in the Morning , at least).

Fox 2000 acquired the rights to The Passage (and its two possible sequels) in 2007, two years before the novel was even published.

Set a hundred years in the future, the novel takes place in a post-apocalyptic world in which a large number of humans have been mutated into vampires by a supposedly health-boosting drug (based on a virus carried by bats).

The story follows colonies of human survivors trying to avoid the bloodthirsty threat

It's an attention-grabbing premise, even if it does unfortunately echo letdowns like Daybreakers and Will Smith's I Am Legend adaptation.

Then again, on paper Cloverfield could have sounded like a traditional monster movie, and Reeves remake Let Me In respectfully retained the unconventional approach to vamps from its source material.

Reeves will oversee the rewrite of the script, which was written by John Logan ( Gladiator ), who penned it when Ridley Scott was interested in directing.

It remains uncertain whether Reeves will direct this vampire epic or the They Live remake next, but Cloverfield 2 and The Invisible Woman sure are looking a long way off.

Matt Maytum is the former Editor of Total Film magazine. Over the past decade, Matt has worked in various roles for TF online and in print, including at GamesRadar+. Bucket-list-ticking career highlights have included reporting from the set of Tenet and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as covering Comic-Con, TIFF and the Sundance Film Festival.