Movies
‘Infinite’ Will Explore the Afterlife In Deep Space
In a competitive situation, Sony is picking up the supernatural spec titled Infinite by rising filmmaker Jacob Chase, reports THR.
Sounding like a new take on Event Horizon:
The story centers on a group of scientist-adventurers that have traveled to outer space, to the deepest of oceans, and now set their sights on their most dangerous expedition: to explore the afterlife.
Neal H. Moritz, the producer behind the Fast and Furious franchise, will produce via his Original Films banner.
Chase is a former child actor who is now in full filmmaker mode. Two years ago he won $1 million for directing Doritos’ Super Bowl commercial “Doritos Dogs,” which he made in one day for $1,000.
Chase is throwing Hollywood a one-two punch, as the Infinite spec sale comes just two weeks after he set up his short horror film Larry to be adapted into a feature at Amblin, with The Picture Company producing. Chase is writing and directing Larry but is not attached to direct Infinite, which is intended to be a tentpole.
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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