Spec scripts are coming back into fashion in Hollywood, but what also seems clear is that if you want a studio to take notice of your little opus, a fake trailer is the way to go. The latest to adopt that strategy are Brandon Bestenheider and Allen Bey, who just sold their Grim Night to Universal for rather a lot of money.
Fake trailers, of course, aren't new at all: the Coen Brothers made one to get Blood Simple up and running. But living in the future as we do, we now at least get to see them when enterprising execs leak them online{
It seems that once a year, be-hooded "Grims" visit the entire world, causing planet-wide panic and much battening down of hatches. That's the hook, at least. What the actual story is has yet to become clear, but we'll go out on a limb and suggest that it might be about a lone survivor, or group of same, out and about on the very night that they ought to be safely hiding indoors. Who are the Grims, and what do they want? That Jawa-ish look suggests that, Phantasm-like, they might want to shrink us and ship us off to be slaves on Mars.
Bryan Bertino and his Unbroken Films partner Adrienne Biddle are producing Grim Night, along with Marc Platt (Scott Pilgrim, Drive... not the Marc Platt who used to write Doctor Who). Bertino directed The Strangers. Last we heard he'd relinquished directing duties on **Strangers 2 to Laurent Briet, but there's no indication yet whether he plans to be behind the cameras for this one.