Movies
Alien Pic ‘Newcomers’ Shooting Footage From Space!
Production, acquisition and distribution company Cinipix is joining forces with Patricia Beninati and Michael Anderson’s Centerboro Productions to produce the sci-fi action film Newcomers and will send XCOR Aerospace’s commercial spacecraft The Lynx into space to shoot exclusive footage for the film, the Hollywood Reporter reveals.
The Lynx will be piloted by former NASA Astronaut Col. Richard A. Searfoss on an expedition that producers say marks the first Hollywood project that commissions footage from a privately owned space company.
Plot details are being kept under wraps, but “Newcomers will center on a former NASA astronaut who saves Earth from an alien invasion with help from the commercial space industry.”
Beninati and Anderson adapted the screenplay from an original story and script by Beninati. Cinipix CEO Todd Slater (Ray, Raze) will produce alongside executive producer Mat Hayden. They join producers James MacLean (Archetype Entertainment) and Jacob Silver, who originally developed the movie package with Beninati and Anderson.
Producers are now talking to directors with an eye toward starting principal photography in the first quarter of 2014.
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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