After a reportedly intense 24-hour bidding war, Universal has secured the rights to the next feature film based on a story by Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn. But unlike Gone Girl, the author’s latest effort is a short story, which makes the bidding war even more interesting — although it’s not that curious since Gone Girl turned out to be such a huge hit (the less said about the mediocre adaptation of Flynn’s Dark Places, the better). The new story is titled The Grownup, and it’s available on Amazon if you just can’t wait for Universal’s adaptation to hit theaters, or if you’ve been jonesing to read some new Flynn.

Variety reports that Universal nabbed the rights to Flynn’s The Grownup after a heated 24 hours in which Paramount, TriStar and 20th Century Fox all vied for the rights to the short story. Universal’s Michael De Luca will produce, with Natalie Krinsky (Gossip Girl) set to adapt.

The Grownup is Flynn’s subversive and expectedly dark take on the classic ghost story, and centers on a con woman who masquerades as a palm reader and agrees to help a troubled client at her home. The woman informs the con artist that her family has been plagued by a haunting in the house, and asks her to perform an exorcism. That’s when things take a sharp turn for the worse, exacerbated by the woman’s stepson and his disturbing behavior.

Flynn’s story originally appeared in George R.R. Martin’s Rogues anthology under the title What Do You Do?, and it’s unclear what — if any —involvement Flynn will have with the latest big screen adaptation of her work.

In addition to Gone Girl and Dark Places, Flynn’s debut novel Sharp Objects is also in development as a miniseries for Lifetime with Mad Men vet and unREAL creator Marti Noxon.

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