Movies
Jake West Takes on Multi-Genre ‘Scribbler’
Evil Aliens and Doghouse director Jake West is back again with The Scribbler. Being produced by Stealth Media Group, shootings is scheduled to begin on March 1 in the UK. The film is a noir sci-fi action thriller about a young woman recently released from a mental hospital, and continuing a treatment programme to rid her of her alternate personalities. She moves into a halfway house for mental patients where the residents begin to die at an unusual rate. Check out more details and word from West below.
From Director – Jake West and writer Dan Schaffer, the creative team who brought you the successful UK horror comedy film Doghouse – starring Danny Dyer, Stephen Graham and Noel Clark… comes The Scribbler
The Scribbler is based on Dan’s critically acclaimed and very commercial graphic novel published by Image comics and will be Jakes 5th feature film after a string of genre successes.
The film is bring produced by Craig Tuohy and co-produced with Spice Factory for a budget of around US$3.5M
At present the producers are out to an up and coming and internationally recognized UK cast which will be announced shortly.
Stealth Media Group is an all rights Film Distributor and International Film and TV sales company. SMG was formed in November 2008 by Sean O’Kelly; founder of film distributor Go For It Entertainment, along with film producers Michael L Cowan and Jason Piette of Spice Factory, one of Europe’s most dynamic independent production companies involved in production and structured film financing.
“We are extremely excited to be working with producer Craig, director Jake and writer Dan. We have wanted to work with Jake for many years and The Scribbler is a great project with a great team that we believe in. As a company, part of what we are focusing on in the UK is working with independent British talent. It is also great when you can work with people you consider friends,” said Michael L Cowan Joint CEO Stealth Media Group.
“It is a great pleasure to be working with Stealth and with such a great team of people who know the business well, are passionate, and believe in us such as Michael, ” add Craig Tuohy.
Jake West explains, “I’m very much looking forward to collaborating with Stealth on what I think is my most exciting feature film project to date, and I am delighted to be working with a team who really know their business and will support my vision to realize this fantastic project.“
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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