UPDATE: Mandate Pictures has won the auction for The Day of the Triffids. The film will be produced by Ghost House, the partnership between Mandate, Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert. The deal is seven-figures and I’ve heard it’s the most that Mandate has paid for a project package. Raimi wants to direct it; the original was one of his favorite films as a boy. Raimi and Tapert will board the producer roster, joining Michael Preger, Angry Films’ Don Murphy and Susan Montford, and Mark Gordon, who previously worked with Raimi on A Simple Plan.

EXCLUSIVE: Suitors are bidding on a rights package to do a new version of The Day of the Triffids. I’m told that Warner Bros bidding for David Yates, who graduated from directing the British miniseries State of Play to do the final four Harry Potter films. Among the other bidders is Mandate Pictures, on behalf of Sam Raimi. The deal will be in the seven-figures when the dust clears, and it was wrapped up by Mandate’s Nathan Kahane.

The rights package includes the original scifi novel by John Wyndham, which was previously used as the basis for the 1962 film. It’s classic paranoid alien invasion stuff: when a shower of meteorites lights up the sky, it creates such a gorgeous sight that most earthlings can’t help but look.  So 99% of the population goes blind as a result, but it gets worse. The meteorites unleash Triffids, plants capable of moving around so they can better attack the blind. The rights are held were acquired over a number of years by Michael Preger, who was involved in another Wyndham novel adaptation, the John Carpenter-directed Village of the Damned. Preger is aboard to produce with Angry Films partners Don Murphy and Susan Montford, and Mark Gordon through his Mark Gordon Company. Murphy and Montford are teamed with James Cameron are producing the Guillermo del Toro-directed At the Mountains of Madness. They are also teamed with Preger on a movie version of Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy.

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