Bigfoot Gets His Own ‘John Wick’-Style Revenge Thriller With ‘Wildman’

Hollywood has a long, storied history of chasing high-concept mashups, especially when action franchises get involved. For decades, “Die Hard on a…” was the industry’s go-to shorthand for selling a script fast, but that pitch has quietly been replaced by a new one built entirely around Keanu Reeves’ assassin saga.

“John Wick but with…” has become the phrase producers reach for when they want a project to sound instantly commercial, and it’s usually attached to something recognizably grounded, like a school bus or a cruise ship. This time, the formula has taken a turn nobody saw coming, and it involves neither guns for hire nor stylish suits.

Badlands, the genre label run by Scott Strauss that operates as an arm of Thunder Road, the production company behind the ‘John Wick’ franchise, has acquired the spec script for ‘Wildman,’ a project unofficially but accurately described as ‘John Wick’ meets Bigfoot. The logline is exactly as blunt as that description suggests: when his younger brother is killed by hunters, Bigfoot sets out on a bloody quest to retrieve the body, killing everyone responsible along the way.

It’s the kind of premise that sounds almost too absurd to work, and yet that absurdity is precisely what’s generating buzz. Thunder Road’s Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee, the producers behind the ‘John Wick’ movies, are attached to the project through Badlands, giving the pitch real franchise-adjacent credibility rather than just a punchy tagline.

The path ‘Wildman‘ took to get acquired is almost as unusual as its premise. Writer Jacob Rainer, a Texas native with a long-running personal fascination with Bigfoot lore, entered the script into Blood and Ink, a horror screenwriting contest run by Carson Reeves on his site Scriptshadow.net.

Reeves highlighted the script as one that caught his eye during the contest, and that attention was enough to pull in manager Jake Wagner of Alibi Entertainment, who sought Rainer out directly. From there, the project moved quickly toward a studio deal, marking Rainer’s first sale as a working Hollywood writer, according to reporting from The Hollywood Reporter, which broke the story.

That kind of trajectory, from an amateur horror contest to a produced acquisition backed by major action producers, is rare, and it’s part of why the deal is turning heads even before a director or cast has been attached. No filmmaker has been confirmed yet, and details about casting or a release timeline remain unannounced.

Revenge thrillers built around a grieving protagonist working through a kill list are nothing new, but swapping in a mythical cryptid instead of a retired hitman gives ‘Wildman’ a genuinely fresh hook. It also taps into a broader appetite for Bigfoot-centered horror and genre fare, a subgenre that’s quietly maintained a dedicated following for decades.

Badlands isn’t slowing down elsewhere either. The label is set to release its spider-invasion horror film ‘Crawlers,’ starring Matilda Lutz, on October 16, giving the studio a genre release on the calendar well before ‘Wildman’ likely enters production.

For now, ‘Wildman’ remains in the early stages of development, but the concept alone has already sparked plenty of online chatter, with fans imagining just how far the film could lean into its outlandish premise while still delivering the kind of visceral, hand-to-hand action ‘John Wick’ popularized. Whether the finished film leans more into grief-driven horror or full-blown action carnage will likely depend heavily on who eventually signs on to direct.

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