Movies
‘The Shining’ Sequel, ‘Dr. Sleep,’ is “Goddamn Scary” — Yates Explains Why He Bailed on ‘The Stand’
With “Bag of Bones” premiering on A&E in December, “The Dark Tower” fighting for a cable deal, and an array of remakes in development, Stephen King is hotter than ever. The news continues today with a double-dose of King starting with another “Dr. Sleep” update.
According Lilja’s Library, on November 12th King announced that he was officially done with the second draft of “Dr. Sleep,” the literally sequel to “The Shining,” stating that “It’s a goddamn scary book.” The plot includes a traveling group of vampires called The Tribe. Get more on the project here.
In other news, Harry Potter director David Yates spoke with Collider as to why he passed on a fresh adaptation of King’s The Stand, which Warner Bros. eventually landed on Ben Afflek to get behind the camera. Get the skinny inside. “I was offered ‘The Stand.’ I love ‘The Stand,’ I read it when I was a kid, it was one of my favorite books when I was growing up, I love Stephen King, I think he’s a remarkable writer,” Yates told the site. “And coming out of ‘Potter,’ you wanna work with an author who has the same reach as a Jo Rowling, and frankly Stephen King does. My issues though were about the adaptation. I wanted to work with Steve Kloves, Steve Kloves wanted to work with me, we were both committed to doing it, but in that time it took to let go of ‘Potter’ and to think about how we would tackle the adaptation, we both decided that it wasn’t for us, so we left it. We sort of withdrew basically.”
What’s interesting is how Yates explains that the story doesn’t lend itself to the kind of “tentpole” feature Warners wanted.
“What I love about King’s work and what I love about ‘The Stand’ is the fact that Stephen King really puts you into these people’s lives, and you see the world from a very intimate human level, which normally is something I love. But we felt this pressure to make these super tentpole movies with this material, and the things that you get in ‘Potter’ — which are these extraordinary episodes of action — they didn’t exist in the material, and I was worried I wouldn’t be able to deliver the kind of movie that ultimately the studio was hoping to get from this material. I could see making a miniseries from it, a really interesting, intricate, layered, enjoyable long-burn of a miniseries, I could see that, but what was missing for me were the big movie moments in the material, the big set pieces.”
It’s disappointing that they passed on the project, but respectable that they wanted to do right by the source material. Does this mean Affleck is getting himself into an ultimate failure?
Described as “Ted meets ET,” David Mikalson’s raunchy comedy Goblin is being brought to life over at A24, and Will Forte (“The Four Seasons”) is now in talks to star.
Deadline first reported the news this afternoon.
Kenneth Branagh has been cast to voice the titular Goblin in the upcoming A24 movie, with the character said to be “green-colored” as well as “anatomically correct.”
Skyler Gisondo (Superman) is reportedly playing the Goblin’s human best friend.
The mysterious project sounds a bit like films including A Gnome Named Gnorm and more recently, Frankie Freako, though it’s important to note that it’s not billed as a horror movie.
Deadline details, “After [Mikalson] hatched the idea to make an outrageous buddy comedy about a goblin, using a practical puppet and operating outside the Hollywood system, his script quickly got him a rep team. While others might have eyed the raunchy comedy as a writing sample or planned to wait to see the micro-budget version Mikalson has been directing in Kentucky, A24 jumped all over it. The hot indie essentially has agreed to finance a full feature.”
“There was a lot of interest, but A24 came with what Mikalson really wanted, after spending all his money crafting the puppet title character: they acquired the movie and agreed to let him make it with a significantly increased budget than what he had left after creating the anatomically correct title character,” Deadline’s report goes on to explain.
What does the titular Goblin actually look like? Well, a cake that Mikalson had whipped up for his reps might give us our first look at what to expect. Deadline explains the photo you’ll see down below, “Take a look at the cake he commissioned with Marc Gravelle at Cake Art in West Hollywood, to present to his reps as thanks for making his dream come true.”
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