Movies
Stephen King’s ‘Cujo’ Being Resurrected
A press release circulated on Facebook back in January that reveals that Stephen King’s Cujo could bite again.
Lang Elliott, President & CEO of Sunn Classic Pictures, Inc., announced that Sunn plans to produce the remake of Cujo this year representing the 30th Anniversary since Sunn produced and distributed the original Cujo motion picture in 1983, based upon Stephen King’s novel. The 1983 version was highly successful at the worldwide box-office and, compared with today’s inflation and higher ticket prices, the box-office would be well over $225 million even without ancillary sales (i.e., DVD, cable, free television, pay-per-view, etc.).
“Cujo is the story of a large, playful St. Bernard dog that is transformed into a hideous killing machine after being infected by rabies. Donna Trenton’s car is on the fritz, and she and her son take her ailing automobile to their mechanic. Upon their arrival, the car stalls and refuses to restart. The mechanic fails to appear so Donna searches for him. The transformed, maniacal Cujo reveals himself; he is highly agitated and very aggressive. Donna hardly recognizes this filthy, monstrous creature foaming at the mouth. Suddenly Cujo charges Donna, who barely makes it back into the car for protection. Trapped with her son and the windows rolled up, the sweltering heat begins to take its toll. Cujo’s powerful state of insanity and violence await.”
Watch a sales trailer inside that was taken to Berlin and the forthcoming Cannes market in May.
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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