Taika Waititi Hatches Film Adaptation of Deb Olin Unferth’s ‘Barn 8’

Taika Waititi is heading to the henhouse. Searchlight Pictures has tapped the Oscar-winning filmmaker to direct a feature adaptation of Deb Olin Unferth’s novel Barn 8, with She-Hulk: Attorney at Law creator Jessica Gao set to write the script, according to Deadline.

The project keeps Searchlight firmly in the book-to-screen game after recent literary titles like Rachel Yoder’s surreal motherhood horror Nightbitch and Bruce Springsteen drama Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere. For readers, it’s another sign that ambitious, oddball novels are still very much on Hollywood’s menu.

Inside ‘Barn 8’: A Million-Chicken Heist

Published in 2020, Unferth’s Barn 8 centers on two U.S. auditors of chicken eggs who hatch a radical plan: steal one million hens from an industrial farm in a single night. What starts as a caper quickly turns into a chaotic rescue mission, led by a ragtag band of animal-rights activists.

The novel is part comedy, part tragedy, and part furious indictment of factory farming. Some chapters even unfold from the perspective of the birds themselves, giving the book an off-kilter, intimate look at lives usually reduced to statistics. It’s the kind of tonal tightrope—deadly serious themes delivered with wit and weirdness—that Waititi has walked in films like Jojo Rabbit.

The film will be produced by Gotham Group’s Eric Robinson and Ellen Goldsmith-Vein alongside Waititi, Ishi Metkar, and Michelle Chan through Waititi Productions. Searchlight executives Taylor Friedman (SVP Production) and Pete Spencer (VP Production) will oversee the project.

Searchlight’s Literary Kick and the Adaptation Boom

Barn 8 arrives amid a broader surge in prestige book adaptations. Searchlight has leaned hard into literary material in recent years, backing projects like Nightbitch, adapted from Rachel Yoder’s 2021 novel about a mother convinced she’s turning into a dog (UPI). Across the industry, adaptations ranging from Maggie O’Farrell’s historical hit Hamnet to Warren Adler’s marital warfare classic The War of the Roses are drawing talent and awards buzz (Hamnet), (The Roses).

Studios are increasingly open about how much of their slate is powered by books; recent Netflix data shows that literary adaptations quietly dominate what audiences actually watch, from romance to horror to fantasy, as we explored in our look at the streamer’s adaptation numbers. Searchlight’s pipeline—from Nightbitch to Barn 8—fits squarely into that trend, favoring character-driven, thematically rich stories over straightforward IP cash-ins.

For readers, a Waititi-directed Barn 8 could also send Unferth’s novel back up the charts, much as other high-profile adaptations have revived interest in their source material. It’s the same page-to-screen halo we’ve seen around projects like Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet and even upcoming titles highlighted in our roundup of 2026’s most anticipated book adaptations.

No casting or production start date has been announced yet, and as with many buzzy literary options, the project will likely evolve as Gao’s script takes shape. But a darkly comic, socially sharp chicken-heist movie from one of cinema’s most distinctive satirists? For book lovers and film fans alike, Barn 8 just became one of the most intriguing adaptations to watch.