Movies
‘Halloween 3D’ in Theaters by Summer of 2010
Thanks to our boy BC and his incredible hawk eyes for catching an article over at the LA Times that will make Michael Myers fans very happy. Apparently, Rob Zombie hasn’t put an end to franchise as the Weinstein brothers are already planning a return to Haddonfield in 2010 with Halloween 3D. While Halloween II only opened at the #3 spot this weekend, had it not started a fist fight with The Final Destination, it would have easily taken the top spot and make over $30m. The Weinsteins knows this and are quickly making plans for a third film. Read on for the skinny and then talk about who you’d like to see take the reigns. Who could make Myers even better?
From the LA Times:
““Halloween II” may not have won the box office this weekend, but Weinstein Co. is taking a lesson from the movie that did as it prepares a sequel for next summer.
The independent studio’s co-Chairman Bob Weinstein said today that the 3-D sequel, titled, appropriately enough, “Halloween 3D,” is in development.
The investment it takes to shoot movies in digital 3-D has proved particularly lucrative for horror films. For “The Final Destination,” this weekend’s No. 1 movie, theaters with at least one 3-D screen earned 3.25 times as much as those that showed the movie in 2-D only, according to distributor Warner Bros. That’s substantially higher than for other recent releases. The equivalent 3-D multiple for last month’s “G-Force,” for instance, was only 1.7 on its first weekend. For July’s “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” it was 1.4 andm for June’s “Up” it was 2.2. January horror flick “My Bloody Valentine” earned 6.4 times as much from 3-D theaters as it did from 2-D on its opening weekend.
Weinstein said Rob Zombie, who directed “Halloween II” and 2007’s reboot of the 31-year-old horror series, won’t return for “Halloween 3-D.” He said the studio is in negotiations with a new director, whom he declined to name, who has experience in horror and has a “different take” on the franchise.“
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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