Some books are born bad. Stephen King is a blockbuster novelist, cranking out one or two tomes a year to the delight of his rabid audiences. Not everything is going to be great, and a few clunkers will get through. That’s how art and artists work. We blitz through his doorstoppers and then we’re on to the next one. Fair enough.
The adaptations of his novels are no different. For every Shawshank Redemption there is a Dreamcatcher. Some of us can’t even agree on the genius of Kubrick’s The Shining (including the author), and spend too much time arguing the merits of the Steven Weber iteration. Stop that. When an adaptation doesn’t live up to the film inside your head the failing can be a tremendous hurt. That’s the cost of fandom.
Right now, we’re riding high off a great Stephen King year. IT and Gerald’s Game were rather wonderful interpretations of King’s ideas (let’s pretend to ignore the bizarre misfire that is The Dark Tower). We want to keep that adaptation train running, and it looks like the next brick has been selected for cinematic reassignment. The Hollywood Reporter announced that The Tommyknockers is getting another crack at the bat.
Wow. That’s not a good book.
The movie will be produced by James Wan (Saw, The Conjuring) and Roy Lee (IT), who have taken on a massive challenge. The plot revolves around a glowing hunk of space metal that’s unearthed in the backwoods of the small town of Haven, Maine. Your basic Stephen King setting. Once the hero novelist who discovers the shiny object starts digging, he unleashes a noxious alien gas that slowly transforms the citizens into something monstrous. Grotesque, body horror shenanigans ensue.
In short form Wikipedia detail, “The Tommyknockers” doesn’t sound any worse than the average terror story. A pinch of H.P. Lovecraft, a smidgen of John W. Campbell’s “Who Goes There?” Stephen King’s novel fails the reader with its rambling bloat. The book is a drone with no satisfactory conclusion, and at 700-plus pages, the boredom drags your patience into exasperation.
Don’t believe me? Trust in the author. Talking to Rolling Stone in 2014, King blamed the failure of “The Tommyknockers” on his drug addiction:
“The Tommyknockers is an awful book. That was the last one I wrote before I cleaned up my act. And I’ve thought about it a lot lately and said to myself, ‘There’s really a good book in here, underneath all the sort of spurious energy that cocaine provides, and I ought to go back. The book is about 700 pages long, and I’m thinking, “There’s probably a good 350-page novel in there.”
Here’s the real question, is there a good movie in there? ABC Television adapted the book into a two-part mini-series back in 1993. It was an embarrassing mess starring Jimmy Smith and Marg Helgenberger. They didn’t have the budget to pull off the alien theatrics, nor did they know what to add or delete from the page count.
A new Tommyknockers will need some serious reworking. With The Conjuring and Insidious films, James Wan has proven himself a reliable master of channeling cliche concepts into original scares. One can imagine a spark inside King’s novel igniting his imagination for demonic character designs and jump scares. The more he puts of himself into The Tommyknockers remake the better off we’ll all be.
The post James Wan to Reimagine ‘The Tommyknockers’ in the Wake of Stephen King’s ‘IT’ appeared first on Film School Rejects.
"Never take your mistress on an annual guys' getaway, especially one devoted to hunting - a violent lesson for three wealthy married men." Neon has debuted an official red band trailer for an action thriller titled Revenge, from newcomer Coralie Fargeat making her feature directorial debut. This played to some rave reviews at Fantastic Fest and TIFF last year, and seems like a gritty film with a helluva pitch (see the one-line synopsis at the start of this post). Matilda Lutz stars as Jen, with a cast including Kevin Janssens, Vincent Colombe, and Guillaume Bouchède. It's described as a "razor-sharp feminist subversion of the revenge-thriller", that "gloriously blurs the lines of vengeance and survival while simultaneously delivering a ferocious dissection of gender and genre." Sounds awesome, doesn't it? Yes, you might want to take a look.
Here's the official red band trailer (+ original trailer / poster) for Coralie Fargeat's Revenge, on YouTube:
Jen (fearlessly embodied by Matilda Lutz) is enjoying a romantic getaway with her wealthy boyfriend which is suddenly disrupted when his sleazy friends arrive for an unannounced hunting trip. Tension mounts in the house until the situation abruptly––and viciously––intensifies, culminating in a shocking act that leaves Jen left for dead. Unfortunately for her assailants, Jen survives and reemerges with a relentless, wrathful intent: revenge. Revenge is written and directed by up-and-coming French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat (follow her @coraliefargeat), making her feature directorial debut after a few short films previously. This first premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and Fantastic Fest last year. Neon will release Fargeat's Revenge in select theaters + on VOD starting May 11th coming up. What do you think? Who's in?
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Flock Of Four - Trailer Set over the course of a single night in 1959, FLOCK OF FOUR follows four teens from Pasadena as they journey to Central Avenue, Los Angeles on a quest to find a legendary jazz performer. Directed by: Gregory Caruso Starring: Braeden LeMasters, Isaac Jay, Uriah Shelton, Dylan Riley Snyder, Coco Jones, Shane Harper, Nadji Jeter, Connor Paolo, Gatlin Green, Reg E. Cathey |
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The Death of Stalin - Clip The one-liners fly as fast as political fortunes fall in this uproarious, wickedly irreverent satire from Armando Iannucci (Veep, In the Loop). Moscow, 1953: when tyrannical dictator Joseph Stalin drops dead, his parasitic cronies square off in a frantic power struggle to be the next Soviet leader. Among the contenders are the dweeby Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor), the wily Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi), and the sadistic secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria (Simon Russell Beale). But as they bumble, brawl, and backstab their way to the top, just who is running the government? Combining palace intrigue with rapid-fire farce, this audacious comedy is a bitingly funny takedown of bureaucratic dysfunction performed to the hilt by a sparkling ensemble cast. Directed by: Armando Iannucci Starring: Steve Buscemi, Jeffrey Tambor, Simon Russell Beale, Paddy Considine, Rupert Friend, Jason Isaacs, Olga Kurylenko, Michael Palin, Andrea Riseborough |
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Fourplay - Trailer A story of friendship, love, marriage, secrets, lies that unfolds between two couples in one apartment during a Sunday brunch that will affect their lives forever. Directed by: Dean Matthew Ronalds Starring: Tammy Blanchard, Bryan Greenberg, Dominic Fumusa, Emanuela Galliussi |
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Blockers - Featurette When three parents discover their daughters’ pact to lose their virginity at prom, they launch a covert one-night operation to stop the teens from sealing the deal. Leslie Mann (The Other Woman, This Is 40), Ike Barinholtz (Neighbors, Suicide Squad) and John Cena (Trainwreck, Sisters) star in Blockers, the directorial debut of Kay Cannon (writer of the Pitch Perfect series). Directed by: Kay Cannon Starring: Leslie Mann, Ike Barinholtz, John Cena, Kathryn Newton, Geraldine Indira Viswanathan, Gideon Adlan |
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Personal Problems - Trailer This entirely African American-conceived and produced ensemble drama is the result of a collaboration of a pair of pioneering Black artists: writer Ishmael Reed and filmmaker Bill Gunn, who wrote and directed the underground classic Ganja & Hess and wrote the screenplay for Hal Ashby's The Landlord. Originally intended to air on public television in 1980, it went unseen for many years; the original tapes have been carefully restored by Kino Lorber and the film is now available in its full-length version for the first time in decades! Directed by: Bill Gunn Starring: Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, Sam Waymon , Jim Wright , Walter Cotton |
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