Movies
Warners Planning Major ‘Twilight Zone’ Feature!
Next to Aliens, the one thing I love more than anything in the world is Rod Sterling’s “The Twilight Zone” TV series that ran from 1959-1964. The revamped show sucked, and the 1983 feature film is pretty much garbage, although I have a soft spot for “It’s a Good Life” and “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.”
I’ve been waiting in extreme anticipation for Warner Bros. Pictures to move on the new Twilight Zone feature in hopes that they take it seriously. This afternoon Variety revealed a shortlist of directors in talks, with two of the three surpassing my wildest expectations.
While the ’83 version had four directors, this project will feature a single storyline and one director.
Mutual interest is brewing between WB and at least three individuals: Christopher Nolan, Michael Bay and Alfonso Cuaron, with Nolan being the current frontrunner. Rupert Wyatt, whose Rise of the Planet of the Apes drew rave reviews and more than $400 million worldwide, is a dark horse.
Nolan, the brains and brawn behind Inception, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and the forthcoming Dark Knight Rises, needs a new franchise to latch onto. With his out-of-the-box directing style, he’d be the perfect choice.
Cuaron is another fantastic name, having directed the stunning Children of Men and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban for Warners.
The only name on the list that makes me cringe is Bay, who can deliver on a spectacular level, but hasn’t told a good story since Bad Boys II back in 2003. The Transformers films show he’d rather make a big paycheck than deliver a darker, more Bay-ish pic.
Who would you choose?
Rand Ravich and Jason Rothenberg penned the script, and while plot details are under wraps, sources say the film would be a single storyline that touches on several themes from the Rod Sterling TV show.
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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