Sunday, March 9, 2008

The Occasional John Connolly Update # 2,035: Hooray For Lollywood.

The answer to the question, “What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?” in our weekly Q&A is frequently, “Anything by John Connolly (right) – providing they get it right.” Well, courtesy of Connolly’s excellent blog, it looks like we’re finally going to find out if ‘they’ got it ‘right’ next year. Quoth John:
“This week, filming began on THE NEW DAUGHTER, with Kevin Costner and Ivana Baquero, based on the short story of the same title in NOCTURNES. For those of you curious to know, principal filming is taking place in McClellanville, South Carolina, under the guiding hand of director Luis Berdejo. I still haven’t read the script, which is a matter of choice (although someone who has read it was very impressed with it) but one interesting snippet of information reveals that a casting call went out for a thin, almost emaciated actor to play a “creature” role in full make-up, suggesting that John Travis, the screenwriter, has stuck to the original story’s central idea of something very nasty indeed hiding in the burial mound on Costner’s property. The film is due to be released in 2009.”
The name Luis Berdejo means nothing to us as of yet, but the good news is that he’s Spanish, and that Spanish-language writers and directors have been in the habit of concocting some superb supernatural tales for some time now, including Open Your Eyes (1997), The Devil’s Backbone (2001), The Others (2001), Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and The Orphanage (2007). Will The New Daughter cut the Spanish mustard? Only time, that notoriously doity rat, will tell.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Declan Burke has published a number of novels, the most recent of which is ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. As a journalist and critic, he writes and broadcasts on books and film for a variety of media outlets, including the Irish Times, RTE, the Irish Examiner and the Sunday Independent. He has an unfortunate habit of speaking about himself in the third person. All views expressed here are his own and are very likely to be contrary.