It is a truth universally acknowledged that, no matter how wild Empire’s imagination gets, sometimes there comes a news story so bizarre that we have to gracefully concede that not even we could make this shit up.
And this is one such news story: Rocket Films, the production company owned by Sir Reg Dwight – that’s Elton John to you lot – and David Furnish, has announced plans for Pride And Predator, a sci-fi horror which sees an alien crash-land in the middle of genteel Georgian-era society… and proceed to eviscerate it.
"It felt like a fresh and funny way to blow apart the done-to-death Jane Austen genre by literally dropping this alien into the middle of a costume drama, where he stalks and slashes to horrific effect," Furnish told Variety.
Now we’ll admit it – rarely did a day pass during A Level English, as we slogged our way through the excruciatingly dull Mansfield Park, when we didn’t wish that, somehow, Jane Austen would have changed gears completely and introduced Fanny Price to a slavering, drooling, cannibalistic xenomorph with teeth as big as your head (and an estate of some several thousand pounds a year).
But (despite all evidence to the contrary), we’ve grown up since then, and while we have to admit to laughing when we first heard the idea for Pride & Predator (the name alone is awesome), we’re a little concerned that the movie itself, which will be directed by newcomer Will Clark, may be nothing more than a one-joke movie. And that joke was pretty much worn out when Dead Ringers did Jane Austen meets The Terminator a few years back.
Still, it all sounds delightfully dotty, and with Sir Elton supervising the music (and exec producing), this could be a readymade cult. Shooting will start later this year, in London.