Movies
Comic-Con ’11: AMC’s Epic ‘Walking Dead’ Rooftop Display
With doors about to open, AMC is rushing to construct an absolutely amazing “The Walking Dead” display at the San Diego Comic-Con. Bloody Disgusting snuck some photos of the in-progress diorama from season one that features Michael Rooker stuck on the roof with the undead (it looks like one will be reaching around the door)! Read on to see pure EPIC.
The project is set among a group of zombie survivors of an apocalypse who are led by a police officer, Rick Grimes (Lincoln), in search of a safe place to live. In this latest season of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” TV series, the survivors arrive at Hershel’s Farm, where we will meet Hershel Greene (Scott Wilson), a vet (as in a veterinarian); his daughter, Maggie (Lauren Cohan); and Otis (Pruitt Taylor Vince), the middle-aged ranch foreman who’s such a sweetheart that he all but loses it when he accidentally shoots a fellow survivor. The new cast members join series regulars Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes, Sarah Wayne Callies as Lori Grimes, Jon Bernthal as Shane Walsh, Laurie Holden as Andrea, Jeffrey DeMunn as Dale, Steven Yeun as Glenn, and Chandler Riggs as Carl Grimes.
The second season will consist of a 13-episode arc and will premiere this Fall on AMC.
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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