Movies
‘Friday the 13th’ Writer Turns In Draft!
It’s Friday so why not end the week with some major Friday the 13th news?
“Hannibal” screenwriter Nick Antosca has been working on the script for the next installment of the Friday the 13th franchise. Today, he responded to a fan on Twitter revealing that he’s “turned in a draft a few weeks ago,” further adding that “@bruckmachina & #PlatinumDunes & I all excited to make a great F13 movie. Don’t know schedule.”
David Bruckner (V/H/S, The Signal) is set to direct the latest incarnation of Jason Voorhees, and would have to approve the script, along with the producers at Platinum Dunes. There could (and probably will) be revisions, but it’s exciting to know that progress has ben made, and that things continue to move forward.
This is to be the 13th Friday the 13th, so I expect Bruckner and company to knock this shit out of the park.
We’ve previously reported multiple times that the new Friday the 13th will not be found-footage, and could take place in the 1980’s. In a more recent article, Brad Fuller of Platinum Dunes talked about his hopes for expanding Jason’s mythos and also taking the franchise back to summer camp.
Antosca previously posted an image displaying a series of machetes (implying there’s possibly a new style of machete in the works). He also clarified that the forthcoming Friday the 13th will not be a sequel to the 2009 remake helmed by Marcus Nispel.
Friday the 13th could slash into theaters on May 13, 2016.
Thanks to Bloody reader ‘Francesco’ for the heads up!
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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