More and more Black List scripts are being called from the ranks of the screenplay development realm by production companies and studios looking for fodder they can shovel into the hungry maw of the movie machine. The latest to hit the news radar? Ian Fried’s Gaslight, which Hammer is now working on.
Gaslight, not to be confused withthe Joe Wright project of a little while back, posits that Jack the Ripper was actually caught and secreted away in a London insane asylum. When a spate of murders occur all bearing the same MO – a set of puncture wounds to the victims’ necks – Scotland Yard decides to tap Jack’s criminal mind, Hannibal Lecter-style, for some help catching the new killer.
There’s no word yet on who might direct or star, but it certainly gives an intriguing, Sherlock Holmes-style twist to the Jack story and reminds us a little of our own Kim Newman's Anno Dracula.
And Gaslight isn’t Fried’s first appearance on the list: he made it back in 2010 with The Ever After Murders, which saw fairytale characters getting offed. The man’s obsessed with death…
As for Hammer, the company is currently celebrating success with The Woman In Black, which has done well both in the States and opens here this weekend. Before Hammer gets around to shooting Gaslight, it’ll start making **The Quiet Ones **with John Pogue at the helm. He also wrote the script, which finds an unorthodox professor using his top students to help in his latest project to create a poltergeist. Naturally, the dangerous experiments go all scare-shaped and soon the group realises they’ve unleashed a force much more terrifying and evil than they could ever have imagined. Oh, and it’s inspired by true events, and according to the gang at Bloody Disgusting, Michael Sheen has been offered the lead role of the dodgy prof.
The Quiet Ones is currently bubbling away in pre-production and will kick off shooting in South Africa this coming May.