Movies
Stan Lee Horror Stories Headed to the Big Screen Including ‘Carnival of Killers’ and ‘Sawbones’!
The darker side of Stan Lee is getting its own cinematic universe, Deadline reports, with Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) steering the ship!
The “new cinematic universe” from Bekmambetov’s Bazelevs and ZQ Entertainment, Deadline notes, is “based on the unexploited horror works by Stan Lee.”
The first two films as part of the deal will be Carnival of Killers and Sawbones.
“Some fans may not know this, but Stan Lee wrote several horror comicbook series in the 1940s and 1950s before superhero comics became big in the 1960s,” Gill Champion, POW! Entertainment’s president explained in a statement. “Stan relished revisiting the genre a few years ago when he wrote these stories, and we are excited to bring them to life with a director as visionary as Timur Bekmambetov. We think fans will be surprised to experience a darker side of Stan Lee that they’ve never witnessed before!”
“Carnival of Killers, set amid the Dust Bowl storms that ravaged the American Great Plains in the 1930s, centers around a young girl with psychic abilities who senses that the traveling carnival she and her mother sought refuge in is ground zero for a looming alien invasion.”
“Sawbones follows a frail 12-year old, Alex Covin, who reads a mysterious comic book and is transported into the comic’s terrifying world: a haunted Juvenile Detention Center overrun by demonic forces led by Sawbones, a homicidal entity who preys upon the troubled inmates. Has Alex gone insane? Or is this nightmarish world his new reality? If he is to escape, Alex must find a way to defeat Sawbones, but he quickly comes to realize that Sawbones is the keeper of his darkness and the personification of all his fears.”
Starry Eyes and Pet Sematary filmmakers Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer are on board to write Carnival of Killers, while Matt Greenberg (1408, Pet Sematary) will write Sawbones.
Stan Lee’s POW! Entertainment will executive produce the movies.
Before updating the video nasty Faces of Death, director Daniel Goldhaber and writer Isa Mazzei explored the dangers of online life in tech-thriller Cam, their feature debut that was acquired by Netflix in 2018 after making waves on the festival circuit.
At the end of last year, the Netflix exclusive quietly departed from the streaming platform, left without another streaming home.
It’s not an isolated story; Mike Flanagan’s Hush also left streaming entirely for a period until it was finally picked up on both physical media and other streaming services.
While the tech-thriller currently isn’t available to watch on Netflix, Tubi, Hulu, or any other platforms, that’s not a problem for Cam thanks to a very cool move by Goldhaber: the director has made his breakout film accessible to watch online for free via his website.
As his site notes: “CAM is unfortunately not currently available to view on any platforms, so you can watch it here if you like :).“
No subscriptions or fees necessary, just hit play.
Cam follows Alice (Madeline Brewer), who works as an online cam girl obsessed with her ranking on the cam site. The higher her ranking goes, the more it draws unwanted attention, and Alice soon finds herself replaced on her own show with a doppelganger.
Written by Mazzei, a former camgirl, it uses the horror thriller premise to examine the life of a sex worker; Alice’s career ambition is directly at odds with the shame it brings to her family, and how she tries to spare them from it by keeping them in the dark. It only compounds her danger when the doppelganger enters the equation in Goldhaber’s engaging thriller.
For a deep dive into the treacherous world of Cam, listen to Horror Queers’ episode on it now.
You must be logged in to post a comment.