The Babadook director’s next horror movie will be a Clive Barker adaptation

Jennifer Kent wrote and directed horror sensation The Babadook, and now she’s returning to the genre to adapt a Clive Barker classic.

The Babadook is one of the greatest horror movies of the last decade. A psychological chiller about a storybook monster seemingly terrorizing a mother and child, we placed it at Number 34 on our list of the best horror movies.

Since then, even though she’s been attached to multiple new movie and TV projects, Kent has made just one film; 2018 survival horror The Nightingale.

But now it looks like she’s settled on a third feature via an adaptation of a 1992 novel by Hellraiser scribe Clive Barker.

HarperCollins

The Thief of Always novel, by Clive Barker.

Back in September, Kent told Gizmodo “We’re about to announce something that’s going ahead, a film based on a book. A very well-known horror book. But I can’t really say more than that at this point.”

World of Reel has since reported that to be Barker’s ‘The Thief of Always,’ which was previously adapted as a comic in 2005.

A fable told in the style of a fairytale, Barker wanted the book to appeal to both adults and children alike, telling Fangoria (via his own website): “For the 8-year-olds, ‘The Thief of Always’ is an adventure about a kid who goes to a house that seems to promise everything but has a dark, terrible secret.

IDW Publishing

‘The Thief of Always’ comic.

“To an adult, it’s a story about the problems of time and childhood, and what you give away in the moments of your youth that you can never get back again.

“I was striving for the same kind of layered effect you get with ‘Alice In Wonderland’ or ‘The Halloween Tree’ – books that are wonderful tales, where even as a child you sense that there’s something going on beneath the surface which you can’t quite grasp, and once you go back as an adult, you find it to still be fresh.”

We’ll post an update to this news if/when it becomes official. Until then, for more kiddie scares, check out our list of the best movies to get kids into horror, or for something more real here’s the scariest movies based on true stories.