‘Road of Bones’ Adaptation in the Works from ‘The Black Phone’ Writer/Director Duo

The duo behind Sinister, Doctor Strange and The Black Phone, Scott Derrickson and his frequent partner C. Robert Cargill, are keeping busy in horror. THR reports that Sony Pictures’ Screen Gems has enlisted the pair to adapt Road of Bones, a horror novel by best-selling author Christopher Golden.

Cargill will pen the script and Derrickson will direct, with both producing via their Crooked Highway production banner.

Christopher Golden’s page-turning 2022 horror novel introduces an intense road trip set in Siberia. It follows an American documentarian, Felix “Teig” Teigland, who drives Siberia’s dangerous Kolyma Highway, collecting legends and ghost stories along the way for a planned new series. Teig and his team don’t realize until too late that they’ve embarked on a harrowing journey where supernatural threats are as likely to kill them as the unforgiving terrain.

The supernatural thriller is set around a real highway with grim history: “Siberia along the Kolyma Highway, a real highway that was built in Stalinist Soviet Union using the labor of prisoners from the region’s gulags. Lore has it that hundreds of thousands of inmates perished during the construction of the 2000 km road and due to the permafrost, it was judged easier to just built atop of the bodies.” Golden’s novel emphasizes the icy chill of this eerie stretch of road, blending folk horror and survival thrills.

The announcement arrives on the heel’s of Derrickson and Cargill’s most recent feature, The Gorge, which became Apple TV+’s biggest film premiere since the streaming service launched in 2019. Up next from the duo is The Black Phone 2, set to release on October 17, 2025, from Blumhouse and Universal.

Golden is a New York Times best-selling author known for horror novels like Ararat and All Hallows. The author recently co-wrote the screenplay for with his frequently collaborator,  creator .