Color Out Of Space!!!

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not my favorite lovecraft, but fuck yes!!
EW wrote:Hardware director Richard Stanley to adapt H.P. Lovecraft story

Indie-horror company SpectreVision has confirmed that it will produce Richard Stanley’s new film, Color Out of Space, his first movie since 1992’s Dust Devil. The film is an adaptation of famed “weird” author H.P. Lovecraft’s short story, “The Colour Out of Space,” about a meteorite that drives people insane. Stanley will direct and pen the screenplay for the project, which he has been working on for several years. “There needs to be a scary Lovecraft movie,” Stanley said last year. “I want to make a bad trip film and ‘The Colour…’ definitely has what it takes to be a very, very bad trip indeed.”

“H.P. Lovecraft is the undisputed father of literary horror, and yet, bafflingly, there has yet to be a cinematic treatment that captures the dark beauty of the man’s oeuvre,” said SpectreVision cofounder Daniel Noah, in a statement. “Richard Stanley’s note perfect adaptation of Color Out of Space represents an epiphany for me — as it no doubt will be for legions of Lovecraft devotees around the world.”

Casting is currently underway on Color Out of Space and the plan is for the project to start shooting in early 2016.

Stanley made a splash with his 1990 killer-droid debut, Hardware, but, after Dust Devil, was fired from 1996’s The Island of Dr. Moreau, only to return to the set disguised as one of the production’s man-animal extras. While Stanley has directed documentaries and short films since that disastrous chapter (which was recently detailed in David Gregory’s documentary, Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr, Moreau), he has not been able to get another feature off the ground — until now.

Despite his slim body of work, Stanley is revered by many younger genre filmmakers. “He’s really an artist,” Hostel director Eli Roth recently told EW. “I would love to see Richard come out with another narrative feature. “He’s just a fabulous, fabulous creator.”

SpectreVision was founded in 2010 by Noah, director Josh C. Waller, and actor Elijah Wood. Its previous productions include the vampire film A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, this summer’s making-of-a-serial-killer drama The Boy, and the currently-in-cinemas horror-comedy Cooties. The three SpectreVision founders will today deliver the keynote address at Fantastic Market, the genre market of Fantastic Fest in Austin, Tex.

Re: Color Out Of Space!!!

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now they added the "u" in the title, and oh yeah - nic cage!!
BMD wrote:Richard Stanley Is Directing Nicolas Cage In An H.P. Lovecraft Adaptation
The only appropriate response here is HOLY SHIT.

The last time the good folks over at SpectreVision teamed up with Nicolas Cage, we ended up with Panos Cosmatos' Mandy, a mind-melting, psychedelic horror-thriller.

So, when you hear that SpectreVision and Cage are keeping their little love fest going, it's exciting. When you hear they're making an H.P. Lovecraft adaptation together, it's even better. But when you hear they've hired Richard fucking Stanley to direct said adaptation? Good lord. The Birth.Movies.Death. crew is currently swinging from the rafters, screaming obscenities and shooting Roman candles at one another in celebration.

Here's the news: Cage will star in Stanley's The Colour Out of Space, based on the H.P. Lovecraft short story of the same name. Lovecraft's original tale revolves around a man investigating a supposedly cursed area outside Arkham, MA, where a fallen meteor has turned a stretch of the landscape into a bizarro wasteland where plants grow abnormally large, animals become freakish, dangerous mutants and people go insane. Stanley wrote the adaptation, which will apparently tweak the source material in a few relatively minor ways.

Richard Stanley, of course, is the absolute madman behind Hardware, Dust Devil and ... well, in 1996 he came very close to directing The Island of Dr. Moreau for New Line Cinema, but was unceremoniously removed from the production just days into filming when pretty much everything you can imagine going wrong on a film set, went wrong (that whole escapade, only some of which actually seems to have been Stanley's fault, is chronicled in the 2014 documentary Lost Soul, and I strongly advise every one of you to seek it out; it is bananas).

Needless to say, pairing Stanley and Cage with H.P. Lovecraft is sure to yield interesting results. Stanley's clearly been itching to get back in the game for some time, and this material is right up his alley (just imagine what he'll do with those oversized, mutated animals). Cage, meanwhile, is coming off the one-two-three punch of Mom and Dad, Mandy and the absolutely insane Between Worlds; our man is in the zone like he hasn't been in years!

Needless to say, we cannot wait to see how this one turns out, and will be keeping our ears very close to the ground for further updates. Stay tuned.
somehow i missed "between worlds". anyone see that?

Re: Color Out Of Space!!!

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Good news on all counts I'd say. Never heard of that other one, only seen Mom and Dad and Mandy this year for Cage.
"I'm like a dog chasing cars, I wouldn't know what to do if I caught one. . . . I'm not a schemer. I just do things."

Re: Color Out Of Space!!!

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why do people continually insist on adding their own content to or significantly altering lovecraft's stories? i mean, in the case of reanimator, which was a 9-page or so story, yeah i get it. the first nearly half of this is very slow and entirely unnecessary. why do we need to know everything about every member of this family? who gives a flying fuck? it's not called "the family affected by a space rock". granted, 'color' is only like 30 pages, but a lot is pretty dry scientific stuff, which, when fleshed out, would be plenty for a film. drop the other farms an focus on one if you want. great. but this film is told from the family's POV (mostly, though there are a couple scenes that aren't). the back half gets pretty lovecraft-y and there are some good practical effects to be seen. it almost makes the first half tolerable. i'd have to watch it again to really make a determination. i just don't get how so many people are like "hey, i love lovecraft's stuff! i'm going to make a movie from one of his stories!" but then are also like "hey, this lovecraft stuff isn't nearly as good as my ideas, i'm going to inject those here and change some of his stuff." i mean look, i liked this film fine, and there are a couple great and a couple inexplicable cage scenes/moments. it's just so fucking irritating. you don't need to significantly change the source material to have a great film. look at all the lovecraft films out there - reanimator is clearly the best one, then from beyond, then a huge drop off. so maybe don't do what all those other people did?

richard stanely clearly loves The Thing. this film is kind of set up exactly the same as carpenter's - a group of people trapped in one location by something that fell from space and... changes. there are even a couple scenes explicitly "homaging" the thing with the effects. i appreciated that. but... this family has feet and is a maximum of twelve miles from town. even if the cars don't work, fucking leave you dumb fucks. also, starting the film with a witchcraft scene and implying more than once that she is responsible for the meteorite because of that is beyond fucking irritating.

le sigh. will have to watch again but right now, i wanted to love this, and the back half is good, and there are some cool effects. but the additional writing was totally unnecessary and sucks.

Re: Color Out Of Space!!!

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I really, really enjoyed this. Probably one of the few good Lovecraft adaptions (not counting the many "inspired by" films...) I've seen. The first half was absolutely necessary for the horror that comes after it. Makes *that* scene all the more horrifying. Good stuff.

Re: Color Out Of Space!!!

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hahaha, i just re-read my review. i still believe they are valid points. but i re-watched over the weekend and realized that there was one scene right up front that pissed me off greatly and tainted my entire first viewing. there was no need whatsoever to inject the red herring of witchcraft into this story. so fucking irritating. this time, i just shrugged that off, pretended it didn't exist, and tried to enjoy the rest of the film. it worked quite well for me this time. much more enjoyable. though i do still wish there was more time spent on the "color", the surreal aspects of what's happening, rather than the humans being humans. the soundtrack was great, too.