Movies
Dark Castle Casts Up ‘Unknown White Male’
While I wasn’t a huge fan, Orphan was quite popular among the user reviews here on Bloody Disgusting. Mix that with a love for the House of Wax remake, you are surely going to be looking forward to Jaume Collet-Serra’s latest Dark Castle collaboration, Unknown White Male, which has officially started full casting. Beyond the break you’ll find the next two names attached to the thriller starring Liam Neeson.
Pictured (click to see larger): January Jones, top, and Diane Kruger
January Jones (“Mad Men”) and Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds, National Treasure) have signed to star alongside Liam Neeson in the Dark Castle thriller “Unknown White Male.”
The story centers on a man who awakens from a coma to find that someone else has assumed his identity, and no one, including his wife, believes him. With the help of a young woman, he sets out to prove who he is.
Jones will play Neeson’s wife, who gets caught up in a conspiracy regarding her husband. Kruger will play a Berlin taxi driver and Neeson’s unexpected ally. Jaume Collet-Serra will direct from a screenplay penned by Oliver Butcher, Stephen Cornwell and Karl Gajdusek.
Lensing is scheduled to begin in late January in Berlin.
Joel Silver is producing “Unknown White Male” with Leonard Goldberg and Andrew Rona. Steve Richards, Sarah Meyer and Peter McAleese exec produce.
As with all Dark Castle films, Warner Bros. will distribute. Dark Castle is in post-production on comicbook-based actioner “The Losers.”
Jones, who is best known for starring on the hit series “Mad Men,” next appears on the bigscreen in the Philip Seymour Hoffman starrer “Pirate Radio.”
Kruger was a star of the summer hit “Inglourious Basterds.” Her credits also include Disney’s “National Treasure” films.
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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