Movies
His ‘Conjure Wife’ A Double-Edged Sword
As the saying goes, behind every successful man is a strong woman — who casts spells on his behalf. United Artists has attached “Breach” writer-director Billy Ray to adapt and direct a film version of the horror fantasy novel Conjure Wife. The 1943 debut novel by fantasy and science fiction writer Fritz Leiber Jr., “Conjure” centers on a New England college professor who discovers that his good fortune is the result of his wife’s secret, magical interference. When he pressures her to stop, dark forces descend on the couple without her protection. The book has been adapted three times before: in 1944 as “Weird Woman,” in 1962 as “Night of the Eagle”/”Burn, Witch, Burn!” and in 1980 as “Witches’ Brew.”
Two things that have proven to be pretty dependable at the box office in recent years are horror movies and Christopher Nolan movies. With Nolan’s The Odyssey absolutely dominating the box office this past weekend, many fans of Nolan’s work have been left hungry for a Nolan-directed horror movie. After all, The Odyssey does whet the appetite for Nolan nightmare fuel.
Christopher Nolan has brushed up against the horror genre in the past with 2002 thriller Insomnia, but does he have any interest in someday making a full-on horror movie?
Nolan tells the Empire Podcast in a new chat, “I’ve always been interested in doing a horror film.”
“But horror is most successful when the conceptual framework of whatever the story is is just so undeniable. I think there are very few really great horror movies,” Nolan continues.
So why hasn’t Christopher Nolan directed a horror movie yet?
He explains to Empire, “I’ve never clicked with a particular idea or concept that worked for me. I love the genre. Of all genres, it’s the most visceral. Where the direct response to the audience is the most important. That is to say, you’re trying to make people literally feel something in their bones about what’s going on on-screen.”
Nolan calls horror “a genre in which experimentation is demanded.” He explains, “I go to see a lot of horror films with my kids these days, and you’ll see things in the first half an hour, 45 minutes of any horror film that you’d never see in another genre. Risks that are taken. Dangerous approaches to things. Admittedly, a lot of movies can’t sustain that to the end. But in the horror genre, that kind of innovation is not just respected – it’s really demanded.”
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is now playing in theaters.
Cillian Murphy as Scarecrow in Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight’ (2008)
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