Cabin Fever's Roth steps into The Box for Camelot

Following the acquisition of its Sundance hit Garden State, Camelot Pictures is to finance and produce The Box, a psychological thriller written by Richard Kelly (Donny Darko) and Eli Roth (Cabin Fever) that Roth is set to direct.

Kelly and Sean McKittrick's fledgling Darko Entertainment will produce with Camelot founders Gary Gilbert and Dan Halsted, who plan to take The Box into production later this year.

The screenplay will be loosely based on Richard Matheson'short story Button, Button, which Kelly optioned last year and provided the basis for an episode of The Twilight Zone that broadcast on CBS in 1986. Andrew Hurwitz of Epstein, Levinsohn, Bodine, Hurwitz and Weinstein brokered the deal on behalf of Camelot.

The story centres on an unhappily married couple who discover a mysterious wooden box that brings the bearer instant wealth at the cost of a stranger's life.

"The Box is a genre project with an independent edge," Gilbert and Halsted said in a statement. "The combination of Richard Kelly and Eli Roth is a dream team come true."

"Richard Matheson is one of our greatest genre storytellers," Kelly said. "From The Twilight Zone to I Am Legend and Stir Of Echoes, his work almost demands to be translated into film. With Cabin Fever, Eli made a genre satire that was genuinely suspenseful. We felt that he would be the right director for this film."

"There is no young film-maker working today I respect and admire more than Richard Kelly and I am thrilled to be working with him," Roth added. "I saw Donnie Darko while editing Cabin Fever and was blown away. I hadn't seen a film so startlingly original, funny, disturbing and moving in years."

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