The official website for author Whitley Streiber has announced that Wolfgang Petersen (THE NEVERENDING STORY, OUTBREAK) has been selected to direct Sony’s film version of Streiber’s novel The Grays. Currently available as a mass-market paperback, the book represents an attempt by the author to combine the two major streams his career has followed. Streiber first gained attention with his revisionist werewolf and vampire novels, Wolfen (1978) and The Hunger(1983), both of which were turned into movies. After an alien abduction experience, Streiber shifted to writing non-fiction, starting with Communion, an account of his close encounter. This, too, became a film, starring Christopher Walken in the Streiber role. The Grays uses the popular conception of aliens (as seen in other accounts of real-life aliens and on THE X-FILES ad infinitum) as the basis for a science fiction tale about benevolent aliens among us, who are paving the way for the rest of their brethren to reach Earth ans pass on their advanced knowledge.