Richard Connell’s short story, “The Most Dangerous Game,” has always held a special place in my heart. Having read the story in one of my high school English classes, I was determined to adapt it into a screenplay about a crazed Scottish hunter who breaks a man out of prison, only to hunt him down for sport. While writing the screenplay, I came to realization that even with madness serving as a motivation, this recreational sport can be hard to characterize as it either bleeds into serial killer territory or becomes the Van Pelt (Jonathan Hyde) character from Jumanji (1995). Needless to say, I gave up screenwriting and threw The Fox Hunt (Second Draft, 2002) in a filing cabinet somewhere. Watching Irving Pichel and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s 1932 adaptation only crystallized my rationale behind my abandonment of the project.
