Movies
Neil Marshall Producing the ‘Ghost of Slaughterford’
U.K. sales and finance banner Intandem Films (Mortis Rex, Gallowwalker, Devil’s Plaground) is looking to spook buyers by backing British thriller Ghost of Slaughterford while also repping it at this year’s EFM in Berlin. The thriller is being executive produced by genre fav Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, The Descent, Doomsday, Centurion) and will be directed by Ian D. Fleming, who was Marshall’s second-unit director on his upcoming sword and sandal slasher Centurion. The script details the story of a recently widowed novelist who retreats to a rented mansion in the village of Slaughterford to compose a new novel. She is met by local residents, who all warn her against staying in the house, but she resolves to stay before encountering a ghost. But the locals become the ones to fear. The movie is still in the early stages but is expected to roll before the cameras in June.
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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