Movies
Hammer Films Puts Modern Spin on Zombies With ‘Boneshaker’
It was just announced that Hammer Films (The Woman in Black, Let Me In, Wake Wood) has acquired the rights to the novel Boneshaker by Cherie Priest for adaptation to the big screen. John Hilary Shepherd, a 2010 WGA Award nominee for his work on the first season of the Showtime series, “Nurse Jackie,” is writing the screenplay.
“An example of “steampunk” science-fiction, which incorporates futuristic innovations into a Victorian setting, Priest’s novel is set in an alternate version of 1880s Seattle, where the city has been walled in and a toxic gas has turned many of its remaining residents into “Rotters,” more commonly known as zombies. A young widow hunts for her teen son in the Seattle underworld, while dealing with airship pirates, a criminal overlord and heavily armed refugees.”
“Boneshaker” was nominated for a 2010 Hugo Award for Best Novel, and won the 2010 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.
Project will be co-produced by Hammer and Cross Creek Pictures and co-financed by Exclusive and Cross Creek Pictures.
The novel, published in 2009 by Tor Books, is the first in a series set in the same Civil War-period, alternate-world Priest has dubbed “The Clockwork Century.” The series’ second novel “Dreadnought” was published in 2010 and the third novel titled “Ganymede” was recently released online and in bookstores on September 27th.
Tor Books is releasing the fourth novel in the series in 2012 titled “Inexplicables,” and last week announced a deal with Cherie Priest for her to write a fifth novel in “The Clockwork Century” series. The fifth book will be called “Fiddlehead.”
“Boneshaker is a classic zombie movie with a modern twist which is quintessentially Hammer so it’s a perfect fit for us,” said Simon Oakes. “Cherie Priest’s steampunk series are fantastic with a distinct, unique style and we’re really looking forward to bringing her ‘Rotters’ to the big screen.”
“It’s like Jules Verne meets ‘Resident Evil,’ and we’re thrilled to have such a fun, commercial potential franchise in Boneshaker,” says Oliver. He continues: “John’s an exciting screenwriter and we see this being a real crowd pleaser.”
Universal has been having a hell of a time getting their Universal Monsters brand back on a better path in the wake of the Dark Universe collapsing, with four movies thus far released in the years since The Mummy attempted to get that interconnected universe off the ground.
First was Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, to date the only post-Mummy hit for the Universal Monsters, followed by The Last Voyage of the Demeter, Renfield, and now Abigail. The latter three films have attempted to bring Dracula back to the screen in fresh ways, but both Demeter and Renfield severely underperformed at the box office. And while Abigail is a far better vampire movie than those two, it’s unfortunately also struggling to turn a profit.
Where does the Universal Monsters brand go from here? The good news is that Universal and Blumhouse have once again enlisted the help of Leigh Whannell for their upcoming Wolf Man reboot, which is howling its way into theaters in January 2025. This is good news, of course, because Whannell’s Invisible Man was the best – and certainly most profitable – of the post-Dark Universe movies that Universal has been able to conjure up. The film ended its worldwide run with $144 million back in 2020, a massive win considering the $7 million budget.
Given the film was such a success, you may wondering why The Invisible Man 2 hasn’t come along in these past four years. But the wait for that sequel may be coming to an end.
Speaking with the Happy Sad Confused podcast this week, The Invisible Man star Elisabeth Moss notes that she feels “very good” about the sequel’s development at this point in time.
“Blumhouse and my production company [Love & Squalor Pictures]… we are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” Moss updates this week. “And I feel very good about it.”
She adds, “We are very much intent on continuing that story.”
At the end of the 2020 movie, Elisabeth Moss’s heroine Cecilia Kass uses her stalker’s high-tech invisibility suit to kill him, now in possession of the technology that ruined her life.
Stay tuned for more on The Invisible Man 2 as we learn it.
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