Movies
John Carpenter to Direct ‘Darkchylde’!
THE master of horror is set to bring you the girl of your dreams. John Carpenter – who just saw his latest feature, The Ward, premiere at TIFF – is onboard to direct the long gestured Darkchylde, based on the comic by Randy Queen about a good hearted southern teen cursed to become the creatures from her many recurring nightmares. Every time Ariel Chylde transforms, she sheds her skin and a new nightmare emerges from her Id to act out her deepest, darkest impulses.
John Carpenter and Sandy King’s Storm King Productions have allied with Randy and Sarah Queen’s Darkchylde Ent. to produce the film, following the release of test footage created by Richard Taylor’s Academy Award Winning Weta Workshop (The Lord of the Rings, Avatar, King Kong, The Hobbit).
John Carpenter says, “Randy Queen’s hijacked angel, Ariel Chylde, is the best young female character since Laurie Strode in Halloween. Bringing Ariel and her dark mysteries to life should be quite an adventure for us all.”
Adds Queen, “I’m beyond thrilled that John Carpenter, one of our most important, and legendary genre directors, and the man responsible for such landmark films as THE THING, and HALLOWEEN has come onboard with Weta Workshop to help bring the nightmarish tale of Ariel Chylde to the silver screen. As a horror fan, the thought of Carpenter and Weta together, beautiful dreamscapes, and multiple transformations, makes me incredibly excited. There is a reason nearly his entire catalogue has, or is being remade, and it’s because Carpenter is a genius.”
Offering a stark contrast to super hero comics, Darkchylde was a breakout sensation of the late 90’s and early 2000’s, garnering immediate acclaim, and an unusually large female fanbase. The property went on to outsell Spider-Man, Superman, and Batman in both domestic and foreign audiences, and has been realized in toys, trading cards, apparel, lunch boxes, mini busts, and more recently a hit crossover with Top Cow, and a statue from PopCultureShockToys. Fans can now read the Ariel Chylde saga online via Wowio and Darkchylde.com and a trade paperback collecting the “Legacy” and “Redemption” series of books ships in January from Image Comics.
John Carpenter is an acclaimed director, screenwriter, producer, and composer, who won an academy award for his short film while still just a student at USC. His storied career includes such seminal films as Halloween, The Thing, Escape from New York, Starman, Christine, In the Mouth of Madness, Assault on Precinct 13, They Live, and The Fog. His most recent outing, The Ward, starring Amber Heard as an institutionalized woman tormented by a sinister spirit, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
Watch New Zealand’s WETA test footage for Darkshylde on YouTube.
Described as “Ted meets ET,” David Mikalson’s raunchy comedy Goblin is being brought to life over at A24, and Will Forte (“The Four Seasons”) is now in talks to star.
Deadline first reported the news this afternoon.
Kenneth Branagh has been cast to voice the titular Goblin in the upcoming A24 movie, with the character said to be “green-colored” as well as “anatomically correct.”
Skyler Gisondo (Superman) is reportedly playing the Goblin’s human best friend.
The mysterious project sounds a bit like films including A Gnome Named Gnorm and more recently, Frankie Freako, though it’s important to note that it’s not billed as a horror movie.
Deadline details, “After [Mikalson] hatched the idea to make an outrageous buddy comedy about a goblin, using a practical puppet and operating outside the Hollywood system, his script quickly got him a rep team. While others might have eyed the raunchy comedy as a writing sample or planned to wait to see the micro-budget version Mikalson has been directing in Kentucky, A24 jumped all over it. The hot indie essentially has agreed to finance a full feature.”
“There was a lot of interest, but A24 came with what Mikalson really wanted, after spending all his money crafting the puppet title character: they acquired the movie and agreed to let him make it with a significantly increased budget than what he had left after creating the anatomically correct title character,” Deadline’s report goes on to explain.
What does the titular Goblin actually look like? Well, a cake that Mikalson had whipped up for his reps might give us our first look at what to expect. Deadline explains the photo you’ll see down below, “Take a look at the cake he commissioned with Marc Gravelle at Cake Art in West Hollywood, to present to his reps as thanks for making his dream come true.”
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