Movies
‘The Crazies’ Remake Finally Heading Behind Cameras
It has been about six months since Brad Anderson dropped out of directing The Crazies, only to be replaced by Breck Eisner. Today it was announced that Overture Films (who recently made a pact with Anchor Bay to produce and distribute movies) will bring the remake of the classic 1973 George A. Romero film to the big screen. You can read all about it inside.
Overture Films will produce and distribute “The Crazies,” a remake of the 1973 George Romero pic.
Redo will be directed by Breck Eisner from a script by Ray Wright and Scott Kosar. Michael Aguilar and Dean Georgaris will produce; Romero will serve as executive producer.
Production is set to begin early next year.
“Crazies” revolves around people in a small Kansas town who are beset by a virus that causes insanity and death after a mysterious toxin contaminates the local water supply.
Project was previously set up at Rogue Pictures and Paramount. Overture CEO Chris McGurk and chief operating officer Danny Rosett felt it was a good fit for the company’s expanding slate.
“We’ve been trying to move into horror fare that is clever and smart,” McGurk said.
Overture’s upcoming releases include “Nothing Like the Holidays” on Dec. 12 and the Dustin Hoffman-Emma Thompson starrer “Last Chance Harvey” in late December.
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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