Movies
Lena Headey Joins Ethan Hawke In Platinum Dunes ‘Vigilandia’!
Lena Headey (300, “Game Of Thrones”, “The Sarah Connor Chronicles”) will join previously announced lead Ethan Hawke in Universal/Platinum Dunes’ Vigilandia.
It’ll be interesting to see how Fuller and Form handle smaller budgets and original material. I wasn’t always a fan of their remake stuff (hated Nightmare On Elm Street but absolutely loved Friday The 13th) but they kind of make for interesting old-school producers in the sense that they really actively call the shots on their sets.
Per Variety, ““Game of Thrones” star Lena Headey as landed the female lead in Universal’s “Vigilandia,” starring Ethan Hawke. James DeMonaco will direct from a script he penned. Plot details of the sci-fi thriller are being kept under wraps.
Jason Blum, Michael Bay, Brad Fuller and Andrew Form will produce through Blumhouse and Platinum Dunes along with Why Not Prods. Sebastien Lemercier exec produces. Universal recently came on producer of the pic, the first film under its first-look deal with Blumhouse. While Platinum Dunes has been known for making films at a price, the pic reps its first foray into really low-budgeted fare. Sources say the budget would be similar to that of FilmDistrict’s “Insidious” or the upcoming “Sinister.”
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
You must be logged in to post a comment.