The modern cult classic Upgrade from director Leigh Whannell will find new life on the small screen as Whannell will team with showrunner Tim Walsh to adapt his film for television, with Blumhouse serving as producers.
The series, which Whannell co-created and will executive produce along with showrunner Tim Walsh (Treadstone, Chicago P.D., Shooter), picks up a few years after the events of the film. The television series plans to broaden the universe with an evolved version of STEM and a new host – imaging a world in which the government repurposes STEM to help curb criminal activity.
Upgrade, which Whannell wrote and directed, starred Logan Marshall-Green, Betty Gabriel, and Harrison Gilbertson. In the film, after his wife is killed during a brutal mugging that also leaves him paralyzed, Grey Trace (Marshall-Green) is approached by a billionaire inventor with an experimental cure in the form of a computer chip implant called STEM. The implant provides its host with heightened physical abilities, allowing Grey to exact revenge on those responsible for his wife’s death.
The film was produced for $5 million and grossed more than $16 million at the global box office. It was also the recipient of the 2018 SXSW Audience Award.
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Jason Blum (Halloween, Get Out) and Brian Kavanaugh-Jones from Automatik will executive produce Upgrade alongside Whannell and Walsh. The series is a co-production between Blumhouse Television and UCP.
