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Coming Soon is reporting that Universal has scooped up a new property from up-and-coming horror author Joe Hill, co-creator of the popular IDW Publishing comic series Locke & Key. The studio has optioned Hill’s recent novella Snapshot 1988, about a 13-year-old-boy who discovers that an elderly woman he’s caring for isn’t suffering from dementia, but the attentions of a malevolent memory thief, instead. (Think Inception, maybe, but with an added depressing old-age subtext.)


Hill has been steadily attracting potential TV and film adaptations over the last few years. Locke & Key has been the subject of a number of attempts at TV adaptation, for instance, while his novel Horns was turned into a vehicle for Daniel Radcliffe in 2014. Meanwhile, AMC recently began development on a TV series based on his twisted vampire novel NOS4A2. We can only assume that this quickly accruing pile of credits will serve as a source of pride for Hill’s much-adapted father, horror legend Stephen King—provided James Patterson didn’t decide to go ahead and kill him after all.