NYCC 2024: M3GAN’s Akela Cooper is bringing Bad Idea’s The Lot to the Big Screen

Bad Idea has announced that they are adapting their celebrated comic book series, The Lot, into a feature film. Bad Idea has tapped blockbuster screenwriter Akela Cooper to script. Cooper’s resume boasts a list of critical and commercial hits including James Wan’s Malignant, The Nun II, and the M3GAN franchise. Cooper scripted the sequel, M3GAN 2.0, which is set for release next summer. The film will be produced by Dinesh Shamdasani and Benjamin Simpson for Bad Idea, alongside Akela Cooper. Development financing comes from Smartest Termite and producers Andrew Gallina and Shahin Chandrasoma.

The Lot is a horror story set in the most miserable, vicious pit of vipers — a Hollywood studio lot.

Aviva Copeland has just landed the biggest job of her career, running a Hollywood studio — one of the few black women to do so. But this is no ordinary studio because its backlot harbors the since abandoned soundstage where decades ago an authenticity-obsessed legendary filmmaker hired actual cult members to perform a real-life occult ritual for his latest horror masterpiece. Something evil awoke that day and in the bloody aftermath, the production was permanently shut down, the footage suppressed, and the soundstage that bore witness shuttered…until now. Aviva is about to learn that though the lot may have been closed for a half-century, it’s far from empty.

The Lot from writer Marguerite Bennett and artist Renato Guedes was published in 2021 as part of Bad Idea’s first wave of comics. Bad Idea will be at New York Comic Con this weekend and will be discussing The Lot at their panel presentation on Saturday, Oct 19th at 3:00pm, in Room 408 where they will also be giving away a limited New York Comic Con exclusive edition of The Lot #1 featuring a new cover by EM Carroll. The NYCC edition also includes a new Hank Howard, Pizza Detective story by Robert Venditti and David Lapham.