Movies
New Writing Blood For Reboots Of ‘The Grudge’ and ‘The Ring’!
Last week while Bloody Disgusting was on the Los Angeles set of Takashi Shimizu’s new film, 7500, we had a chance to speak with Roy Lee about that film as well as a few upcoming projects. While I can’t say too much about 7500 right now, Mr. Lee was needled for information on possible new takes on reboots for The Ring and The Grudge.
“We are looking to do a new version of ‘The Grudge’ but we haven’t decided exactly what it will be. We haven’t decided what it will be. We’ve just put it out to the film community that we are hearing takes from writers on what they could bring to the table and what their thoughts are about a new version of ‘The Grudge’.”
Whatever form it takes, you might want to expect it to be a bit different. Why? When asked about parodies of The Ring and The Grudge, Lee replied “I enjoy them. I find them quite funny. But once a horror genre is commonly parodied in other movies it sort of kills that genre or that specific take on that genre so that once you see it it sort of becomes a joke in and of itself so you have to push to find something new.”
As far as The Ring reboot? “It’s the same thing as ‘The Grudge’. They are hearing takes and actually having a script written just to see if it works to restart the franchise. In this situation we are hearing different pitches and once we hear an idea we really like we will potentially execute it.”
7500 lands in theaters on August 31, 2012. Expect more updates, and our full set report, as that date approaches.
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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