Fangoria reported today that Stuart Gordon has finally picked up H.P. Lovecraft’s The Thing on the Doorstep for his next project.
I know what you’re all thinking. Stuart Gordon? Adapt a Lovecraft story? Preposterous!
It was announced over a year ago that he was going to direct the film, but now they’re finally ready to go.
“We’re hoping to shoot in the fall,” he says of the project, which is set at Miskatonic University and deals with body-swapping and people coming back from the dead. “It follows the short story pretty closely, and what’s great about it is that, as far as I know, it’s the only Lovecraft tale that has a strong female character. Normally we have to invent one, but for the first time, we didn’t have to do that. We’re also working with Amicus again, because we had so much fun the first time around.”
By the that last line he’s talking about the newly reformed Amicus Productions, which he partnered with for Stuck. (currently played a very limited release- at the Angelica for you NYC locals)
He wrote the story with Dennis Paoli, of course. If there’s anyone that could adapt the story well, it’s those two. The duo has shown time and time again that they can do them better than anyone, and even when they made huge changes to the story and updated them to modern times (see Re-Animator) they still retained that strange sense of style that Lovecraft had.
So while it’s not the most well received of Lovecraft’s stories, there’s plenty they can do with loss of identity, and madness.
Fango also notes that his Fear Itself episode Eater (about a serial killer with the titular name) will be airing on NBC on July 3rd. The week before that will be John Landis’ installment In Sickness and In Health, directed from a script by Victor Salva, about a woman who gets a note that her husband-to-be is a serial killer on her wedding day. You know that out of the entire season those two are the ones you shouldn’t miss. They created some of the best Masters of Horror episodes, after all.
So while we’re not getting any new Re-Animators anytime soon, any more Gordon is good for me. Do yourselves a favor and read the story (available online here) to get yourself ready for the film.