While he’s making strides back into live-action filmmaking as a director with Flight, Robert Zemeckis is also keeping his producer’s hat on, backing a new project called Charles Fort at Universal.
Should the name have you scratching your head, some background: Fort, born in New York in 1874, had a driving interest in the unexplained. A sceptic by nature, he nevertheless pursued research into odd phenomena of the sort that science tends to reject or ignore. He published several novels and short stories, but is still most famous for his titles The Book of the Damned, New Lands and Wild Talents. His name became synonymous with the exploration of the strange and seemingly inexplicable and his work is still followed today, especially by those who enjoy monthly journal the Fortean Times.
According to the Heat Vision blog, **Snow White and the Huntsman **writer Evan Spiliotopoulos’ pitch for the idea comes across as a “period Ghostbusters.” Given that Dark Horse comics turned the sceptic into a go-getting investigator who dealt with aliens and villains in early 20th century New York, we figure that’s the sort of angle Universal is looking to take. Especially given the box office success of Robert Downey Jr’s action-packed Sherlock Holmes. We’re not quite sure Fort needs to get the hero make-over, but it remains to be seen whether it works…