TV
‘The Mothman Prophecies’ – Director Mark Pellington Teases the Return of the Mothman
One of the most chilling cryptozoology-based horror movies out there, the 2002 film The Mothman Prophecies explores the (allegedly) true accounts of a winged beast that may very well be a harbinger of doom, and it was director Mark Pellington who brought him to the screen. Over 20 years after the film’s release, Pellington teases the return of the Mothman.
At the Eerie Horror Fest in Pennsylvania over the weekend, Pellington hinted that a Mothman Prophecies streaming series is being planned. “Streaming Mothman is coming,” he says.
We don’t have any further information at this time, but Pellington promises that more details will be revealed soon. So stay tuned for more on this one as we learn it.
Released in 2002, The Mothman Prophecies stars Richard Gere as reporter drawn to a small West Virginia town to investigate a series of strange events, including psychic visions and the appearance of bizarre entities. It’s all tied to the cryptid creature known as the Mothman, a humanoid being first seen in the Point Pleasant area in the late 1960s.
Many believe the man-sized bird with wings and red eyes was connected to the collapse of the Silver Bridge in Point Pleasant on December 15, 1967, either warning the residents of what was coming or perhaps playing a direct role in the collapse. Pellington’s movie comes to an end with the bridge’s collapse, amid Mothman sightings and strange prophecies.
As Luiz H.C. wrote on Bloody Disgusting last year, “The Mothman Prophecies is a surprisingly somber and existential picture that characterizes the titular monster as an unexplainable force representing a universal fear of the unknown, taking the legend into a more metaphysical direction than most other interpretations.”
“The film is also responsible for popularizing the Mothman as a cultural icon, with Point Pleasant organizing an official Mothman Festival every year since 2002 as the mysterious winged monster became a staple of American folklore alongside figures like the Jackalope and Sasquatch,” Luiz adds in his 20th anniversary celebration of The Mothman Prophecies.
The movie was based on John Keel’s same-titled book, published in 1975.
What is Mark Pellington cooking up next? Stay tuned…
Published in 2019, Stephen King‘s novel The Institute is getting a TV series adaptation from MGM+, with Deadline reporting today that the project has been given a series order.
Ben Barnes (Shadow and Bone) and Mary-Louise Parker (Weeds) will star.
The Institute comes from director/executive producer Jack Bender (Lost, Mr. Mercedes), writer/executive producer Benjamin Cavell (Justified, The Stand) and MGM+ Studios.
In the eight-episode series, “When 12-year-old genius Luke Ellis is kidnapped, he awakens at The Institute, a facility full of children who all got there the same way he did, and who are all possessed of unusual abilities. In a nearby town, haunted former police officer Tim Jamieson (Barnes) has come looking to start a new life, but the peace and quiet won’t last, as his story and Luke’s are destined to collide.” The website notes that Parker will play “Ms. Sigsby, the charming but iron-willed director of the Institute and a true believer in its awful mission.”
“I’m delighted and excited at the prospect of The Institute, with its high-intensity suspense, being filmed as a series,” King said. “The combination of Jack Bender and Ben Cavell guarantees that the results will be terrific.”
“We are thrilled to have the opportunity to work again with Stephen King. And The Institute, based on his critically acclaimed novel, is an exciting addition to the MGM+ original series slate,” said Michael Wright, head of MGM+. “There is no creative team I would trust more to bring the book to life than Jack and Ben, whose creative vision and love of Mr. King’s voice, will bring this thought-provoking and gut-wrenching story to life, in the engaging, cinematic, and thrilling style MGM+ viewers expect.”
Here’s the novel’s full synopsis, via Amazon:
As psychically terrifying as Firestarter, and with the spectacular kid power of It, The Institute is Stephen King’s gut-wrenchingly dramatic story of good vs. evil in a world where the good guys don’t always win.
In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents—telekinesis and telepathy—who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” Kalisha says. “You check in, but you don’t check out.”
In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute.
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