Books
AMC’s “NOS4A2” Premiere Hints at Shared Stephen King Universe!
This summer, AMC is bringing to life the epic tale of Vic McQueen and her discovery of a supernatural ability that puts her at odds with a very sinister force of evil. One that also bears supernatural gifts of his own. At SXSW in Austin, Texas, AMC premiered the pilot episode of NOS4A2 (review), giving fans and festival goers a tease of what’s to come. Showrunner Jami O’Brien, lead actors Ashleigh Cummings and Zachary Quinto, and executive producer Joe Hill stuck around after the premiere for a lengthy Q&A. Both the Q&A and premiere revealed some very key details about the series that makes this a must see this summer.
Joe Hill’s novel, NOS4A2, gave readers a new take on the vampire with Charlie Manx, an aged immortal who feeds off the souls of children, forever warping them into twisted shells of who they once were. From the comfort of his Rolls Royce Wraith, he and his child-victims slip in and out of the real world and onto hidden roads that lead to the menacing holiday themed space Manx calls Christmasland.
In the sprawling 692-page novel, readers are eventually given a map of just some of these hidden roads Manx uses to get to Christmasland undetected, and they feature some rather intriguing locations that give nods to other works by Hill and his prolific author dad, Stephen King. Notably, “Pennywise Circus” in Maine and “Lovecraft Keyhole” in Massachusetts, which means that the novel’s universe connects to Hill’s Locke & Key and Stephen King’s It. Both are in very close proximity to NOS4A2’s central location of Haverhill, Massachusetts.
While the pilot episode that premiered at SXSW kept most of Charlie Manx’s secrets hidden, to be parceled out over future episodes, it did feature that very same map from the novel. This means that the series, like its source material, exists in the same world. In the Q&A, though, it was revealed by O’Brien that the first season will only cover roughly a third of the novel’s epic story. It will take multiple seasons to deliver heroine Vic McQueen and Charlie Manx’s full journey.
Though Hill’s novel never really explores the other hidden locations, that they exist at all in a world filled with supernaturally gifted people means that the door is always open. And Locke & Key and It aren’t the only two King and Hill stories that share a universe with NOS4A2 either.
Tune in this summer for the premiere and look for Manx’s map that he pulls out on his way to Christmasland to find more Easter eggs in this shared universe.
Netflix is reuniting with Emilia Perez director Jacques Audiard on an adaptation of French horror novel La Nuit ravagée, Variety reports today.
The project is described as an elevated horror film based on the critically acclaimed horror novel by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo.
It’s set in “Saint-Auch, a fictional suburb on the outskirts of Toulouse in Southern France, in the early 1990s. It follows a group of teenagers drawn to an abandoned house that exerts a strange power on them. After one of their friends dies under disturbing circumstances, they decide to enter the house, not suspecting it’s alive with something supernatural. Once they enter it, it begins to feed on their private fears, desires, and traumas, turning their psychological vulnerabilities into something monstrous and inescapable.“
The French-language Netflix original marks Audiard’s first foray into horror.
The divisive Emilia Perez, Audiard’s Spanish-language musical crime drama, amassed 13 nominations at the 97th Academy Awards but also met with controversy when offensive tweets by star Karla Sofía Gascón during the film’s award campaign.
Del Amo’s source novel was published last year and has been described as an homage to ’80s and ’90s horror in the vein of Stephen King, though its social realism is what lends itself to the elevated horror concept and Audiard’s attachment to the project.
Stay tuned for more as it arrives.
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