Author Adam Cesare released the YA slasher novel Clown in a Cornfield in 2020, which went on to win the Bram Stoker Award for Best Young Adult Novel. The production company Temple Hill Entertainment, which also produced the Twilight Saga, The Maze Runner films, and the Smile films, acquired the movie rights the same year it was released. Now, Clown in a Cornfield, directed by Tucker & Dale vs. Evil director Eli Craig, is finally coming to the big screen next month.
Before the 2025 Overlook Film Festival screening, we spoke with Cesare about the book’s success, which he largely attributes to “Matt Ryan Tobin’s cover,” and states, “I think Clive Barker’s blurb changed my life.” He adds that these elements, along with a killer title, “were a little bit of a perfect storm.”
He admits that the book publisher, HarperTeen, wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, as the company primarily handles “stories about kids saving a dystopian universe and different magic systems and stuff.” Still, Cesare asked them, “What if a clown kicked the head off a kid?”
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He went on to say, “I think that’s a little bit of what we benefited from, is just the idea that it’s not the most original thing in the world, and it’s not meant to be. It’s meant to play in the slasher sandbox in a very codified way.”
Regarding it doing well as a YA book, Cesare says, “Being a hardcover original, it was different than a lot of stuff, and I love that. I got to be part of this little class of people, of authors, that were revitalizing YA horror. I think YA horror now is stronger than it’s ever been five years later. I’m certainly benefiting from that, book sales-wise, but it’s also great for me as a horror creative and someone who loves this stuff with all his soul and all his bones, to see a publisher responding to the appetite that young people have for horror fiction. It’s just really a blessed position to be in, so thank you, and thank you, friends, because you were part of that.”
When it comes to the big-screen adaptation, Adam Cesare had no problem seeing his story in someone else’s hands. He tells us, “I’m a movie guy; people who know me know that. I’ve always had the opinion that film adaptations don’t supplant a book, and a film should be different than a book, and I think this movie is proof that I was right. I think it works perfectly and separately from the book, because it has all the same characters, it has the same plot, but it’s all shot through that guy’s [points to director Eli Craig] aesthetic and the way that he views the world. It feels weird to talk about a film like Clown in a Cornfield as an auteurist beast, but it kind of is, and I couldn’t be more lucky or more blessed about that.”
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Just before heading into New Orleans’ Prytania Theatre, Cesare added, “Just getting to watch the film as a fan is something that I know some of my friends who have had books adapted haven’t gotten to experience and be involved like I’ve been. I keep saying blessed—I sound like I’m about to go to church—but I really do believe that.”
Clown in a Cornfield will be released in theaters on May 9 through RLJE Films and Shudder. Adam Cesare’s book is available on Amazon.