The story broke on Tuesday that Neil Marshall would be exec-producing **The Ghost of Slaughterford **for his Centurion second-unit director Ian D Fleming. Details were sketchy, but Mr Marshall, friend of Empire, got in touch to fill in the blanks.
Not least of which is the identity of the writer and star of the film, one Axelle Carolyn. Not yet a household name, Carolyn cropped up in Doomsday and The Descent Pt. 2, and will shortly be seen "chopping off heads and shooting arrows at Romans" in Centurion. She'll also appear in the horrors Psychosis (with Buffy and Angel's Charisma Carpenter) and The Nephilim.*
Marshall tells us that Slaughterford is self-aware, but "it's not intended to be tongue-in-cheek. It's very much in the tradition of classic British horror, from Dennis Wheatley to Hammer via Amicus. There's humour, certainly, as well as romance, horror and tragedy. But mostly it'll be scary as hell."
Carolyn was a long-standing writer for Fangoria, and the recent author of the book It Lives Again: Horror Films in the New Millennium. All useful experience for navigating your way around a horror script then. Slaughterford, concludes Marshall "is her baby: she's the key creative force behind it. She's a rising star to watch, and I'm not just saying that because I married her!"
*Nothing to do with Carl McCoy.