Movies
Exclusive, Hammer Films Revives Witch Trials With ‘The Daylight Gate’
Simon Oakes, Vice-Chairman of Exclusive Media and President & CEO of Hammer, announced today the acquisition of the film rights to Jeanette Winterson’s The Daylight Gate, the acclaimed novella released under the Arrow Books Hammer imprint from Random House in August 2012.
The acquisition highlights Hammer’s ongoing goal to develop original content for both film and television productions and find projects created by its literary and theatrical deals.
“Set in the early 17th century, The Daylight Gate is based on the Pendle Witch Trial, the most notorious of English witch-trials, and is a tale of magic, superstition, conscience and ruthless murder.”
The novella has received critical acclaim from the likes of The Daily Telegraph, Evening Standard, The Observer and the Literary Review amongst others and was a Sunday Times bestseller.
The announcement was made ahead of the Times Cheltenham Literature Festival ‘Hammer: Screen, Page and Beyond’ panel in which Oakes is participating alongside historian and author of ‘The Hammer Vault’, Marcus Hearn, as well as Martyn Waites and Jon Croker, author and screenwriter of another Hammer property, The Woman in Black: Angel of Death respectively, moderated by Empire’s Chris Hewitt.
The filmmakers behind Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey are expanding their public domain horror universe with a handful of upcoming “Poohniverse” movies, including Bambi: The Reckoning, Pinocchio: Unstrung, and Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare.
Variety has scored the first image from Neverland Nightmare, seen above.
The website details, “Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare follows Wendy Darling as she strikes out in an attempt to rescue her brother Michael from ‘the clutches of the evil Peter Pan.’ Along the way she meets Tinkerbell, who in this twisted version of the story will be seen taking heroine, convinced that it’s pixie dust.”
Scott Jeffrey will direct Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare, expected Halloween 2024.
Jeffrey tells us, “I am taking inspiration from French cinema while in prep for this movie. The film will be incredibly tense. I would say it’s a mesh between Switchblade Romance and The Black Phone with our own spin on it. It is a nasty, violent and incredibly dark movie.”
Megan Placito has joined the cast as Wendy Darling, Kit Green is Tinkerbell, Peter DeSouza-Feighoney (The Pope’s Exorcist) is Michael Darling and Charity Kase (RuPaul Drag Race) is James. Martin Portlock will be playing the twisted version of Peter Pan.
Created by J.M. Barrie way back in 1902, the character of Peter Pan – like Winnie the Pooh – is in the public domain, even if the iconic Disney iteration of the character is very much not.
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