Eli Roth Preping an Alien 'Invasion' for Summit

After breaking on the scene with Cabin Fever and the pair of Hostel films, Eli Roth has been mostly absent from the world of horror. That's okay, though, because his excuse for staying away from what made him famous seems to be a new-found fascination with sci-fi (plus he was a little busy practicing his fake Italian accent and baseball bat swing for Inglourious Basterds). He was long attached to write and direct an adaptation of Stephen King's brain-scrambling book Cell, but that fell through after Hostel Part II underperformed at the box office. That freed him up, however, to begin work on a rather secretive project called Endangered Species, which he has let slip was inspired by mass destruction films like Transformers and Cloverfield.

And now it looks like Roth has another sci-fi project in the works that might make a nice double-bill with the elusive Endangered Species. Summit Entertainment, no doubt buoyed by the tremendous performance of the Twilight Saga at the box office, has begun spending money on fresh pitches, one of which Shock Till you Drop tells us is simply titled Invasion. The script was written by relative newcomer Ben Magid, which will be ushered through Summit's development process by Roth and his producing-partner Eric Newman. There are no hints available yet as to whether or not they'll be taking a similar first-person-perspective approach, but the project is being described as Cloverfield-esque; a description I'd say fits quite well the brief setup Shock relayed:

"...we know the film opens with a wicked subway accident in Los Angeles in which the survivors (the film's protagonists) climb from the wreckage to find the, now "snowy," city in ruins. What they encounter topside is bodies, mobs of people in a state of panic and acidic "goo.""

It's not much to go on for now, and Roth doesn't have a great track record of seeing projects off the ground, but with a 'snowy' LA and 'acidic goo', Invasion should be worth keeping an eye on.