Movies
Timur Bekmambetov on FIVE Genre Films In Development!
We all knew that Timur Bekmambetov, the director of Day Watch, Night Watch and Wanted, has been almost just as busy as Guillermo del Toro. In addition to a few non-genre films, the Russian director is currently developing an adaptation of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter with Tim Burton, a drunk-driving 3-D epic for Lionsgate entitled Red Asphalt, a supernatural twist to Moby Dick, and Twilight Watch, the finale to his vampire trilogy. A new interview was posted where Bekmambetov updates the status on all of these projects, while also dropping the bomb that he’s officially off of Summit Entertainment’s The Last Witch Hunter.
All news bites from Empire Online:
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter: “That one I’m prepping to direct myself. It is not a comedy at all – it is a very entertaining, epic history lesson for millions and millions of teenagers. If you remember Nightwatch, it is maybe in the vein of that kind of movie.”
He continues, “We are keeping the traditional look of Lincoln – the big hat and the beard. He has to be historically correct, but with a few special weapons. There is only one book, but there will be many opportunities to develop and explore this world if we get to do sequels. I hope we will start this winter. We are shooting in America.”
Moby Dick: “I’ve developed the whole world, but we’re still working on the script. To fight a supernatural creature, you need people with supernatural abilities. It’s the same story but with a different take, much more mystical. The whalers are not ordinary people, and yes, the whale will be done digitally.”
Red Asphalt: “I am working on that with Lionsgate. It’s a movie about drunk driving… in 3D! 3D is the only way to recreate what you feel when you drink and drive.”
“It’s my original idea – I wrote the treatment,” he adds. “Everyone drinks and drives once, and I want to make a horror movie about it. It’s one big car chase. People will feel what it’s like when you’re drunk and driving, and it’s really scary. The world is not exactly the same.”
Twilight Watch: “I hope it happens. It’s like first love – we created this world and now I’m watching the Twilight movies, I feel like we missed something by not doing Twilight Watch. Because there are a lot of ideas in those films that we were going to use. But we didn’t finish the story. It would be good to get around to it one day.”
The Last Witch Hunter: “I am not working on that one. It was in discussion but is not happening now.“
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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