'Outside The Box' Family Adventure Film In The Works From 'Freaks' Directors

Adam B. Stein and Zach Lipovsky's sci-fi thriller Freaks hits theaters this weekend, but the duo has already lined up their next directing gig. Universal has purchased the rights to Outside the Box, a new adventure movie from Stein and Lipovsky that's being compared to some of the Amblin films from the 1980s.The Hollywood Reporter brings word that Universal has shouldered the competition out of the way and bought the rights to Outside the Box, which "is said to be a family adventure with fantasy elements in the tone of the movies made by Steven Spielberg's Amblin banner in the 1980s."

Details about the actual plot are still hard to come by, but when we caught up with Kim Possible filmmakers Stein and Lipovsky for a chat about their new movie Freaks, which is set in a world where some humans have superpowers but there are no traditional superheroes or supervillains, the writer/director pair told us they were excited about the possibility to return to that world in future projects:

"We made this film so we could show the world the voice that we have, that we wanted to show what we could do. It's led to all sorts of exciting things. One of the coolest is getting a lot of our idols, people that we never thought we'd ever get to meet, getting to see the film and love the film and then want to work with us, which has been really incredible. Above that, we've really wanted to do more with the world. In the film, you've seen one little slice of this world because we told a small story, but we feel like there's a much bigger world to explore. Which we would love to do...[this movie has] led to maybe being able to make more in the world of Freaks. That would be awesome, if possible."

Could Outside the Box be secretly set in that same world, or is this a whole new universe for these filmmakers? The notion of this new movie drawing comparisons to early Spielberg works is interesting too, because Freaks has garnered some of those same comparisons. In our interview (which will be published in full soon), the directors themselves talked about genre-hopping in the same movie and name-checked Spielberg specifically:

"At some point, [Freaks is] a horror film, at some point, it's full of wonder like a Spielberg movie, and at other points, there's bloodlust and revenge like a Tarantino film. By the end, it's a sci-fi epic."

You can check out the trailer for Freaks here, and see it in theaters when it debuts on September 13, 2019.