Movies
Dowdle Brothers Team For Shyamalan’s ‘Devil’
We broke the news exclusively two weeks ago that the Dowdle brothers (Quarantine) ing for M. Night Shyamalan’s first NIGHT CHRONICLES, only details were kept mum. This afternoon the official announcement was made on the film, which goes by the title of Devil. You can read all of the details inside for the film slated to be written by 30 DAYS OF NIGHT’s Brian Nelson.
M. Night Shyamalan and Media Rights Capital have formalized the first project in their three-picture deal to hatch fright films. They’ve set Brian Nelson (“30 Days of Night”) to write “Devil,” which “Quarantine” helmers John Erick and Drew Dowdle will direct.
The supernatural thriller is based on an original story by Shyamalan, who’ll produce with Sam Mercer under the Night Chronicles banner. The Dowdle siblings will be executive producers. The film will be PG-13 and will begin production next year.
MRC set the Night Chronicles as a financing and production partnership with Shyamalan in July. The company’s goal is to generate one genre film per year over three years, with Shyamalan hatching the ideas and overseeing the selection of talent and the creative direction. Shyamalan will co-own the film copyrights and retain artistic control while MRC makes distribution deals, as it does on all the pictures it finances.
Shyamalan, who next directs “The Last Airbender” for Paramount and Nickelodeon, got an ownership stake in his most recent directing effort, “The Happening,” in a co-financing configuration between India-based UTV and 20th Century Fox.
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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