‘Wildman’: The ‘John Wick’ Meets Bigfoot Horror Thriller Now in Development

Hollywood has long relied on shorthand pitches to sell high-concept genre scripts, with “Die Hard on a…” serving as the go-to comparison for decades. In more recent years, that shorthand has shifted toward a new franchise entirely, with “John Wick but with…” becoming the pitch of choice for ambitious action-horror hybrids.

That trend has now produced what might be its most unexpected combination yet, blending revenge-thriller mechanics with cryptid horror in a way that sounds almost too strange not to work. The project’s path to acquisition started in an unusual place, far removed from the traditional studio pitch meeting circuit.

Badlands, the genre label run by Scott Strauss and an arm of Wick franchise producers Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee of Thunder Road, has acquired the spec script for ‘Wildman,’ a new horror thriller described as ‘John Wick’ meets Bigfoot. The film follows Bigfoot as he goes on a quest to retrieve his younger brother’s body while killing everyone responsible along the way, after the sibling is killed by hunters.

The script comes from Jacob Rainer, a relatively unknown writer whose work gained attention after being highlighted on Scriptshadow.net, a website run by Carson Reeves that’s dedicated to spotlighting promising screenplay talent. Rainer, a Texas native, indulged his own longtime fascination with Bigfoot by entering the project into the site’s Blood and Ink horror screenwriting contest.

That contest exposure proved to be the script’s ticket into the industry, with Reeves himself signing on as an executive producer following the acquisition. It’s a path that stands in sharp contrast to how most studio projects typically make their way to development, relying instead on grassroots buzz built entirely around the strength of the writing itself.

Given the involvement of Iwanyk and Lee’s Thunder Road banner, the ‘John Wick’ comparisons attached to the project carry a bit more weight than a typical marketing shorthand might suggest. Both producers have deep ties to the franchise that inspired the pitch in the first place, giving ‘Wildman’ a direct creative lineage to the action series it’s being compared to.

Details remain limited at this early stage, with no director currently attached to the project and no announced cast or release timeline. As development continues, more specifics about the film’s tone, scope and production plans will likely emerge in the coming months.

In the meantime, Badlands has other genre releases already further along in the pipeline. The label is set to release ‘Crawlers,’ a spider-invasion horror film starring Matilda Lutz, on October 16, giving fans a sense of the kind of high-concept, genre-forward projects the studio has been building its slate around.

The premise itself, a grieving Bigfoot working through a hunting party with the same brutal efficiency as Keanu Reeves’s legendary assassin, has already generated considerable buzz online since the acquisition news broke. That kind of absurd-yet-compelling concept has become something of a specialty for the horror genre in recent years, where unconventional premises often find surprisingly devoted audiences.

Whether ‘Wildman’ ultimately delivers on the promise of its high-concept pitch remains to be seen, given how early the project still is in its development process. Still, with genre producers this closely tied to the very franchise inspiring the comparison, expectations are already building for what could become one of horror’s more memorable action hybrids in years to come.

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