quietearth [Celluloid 08.25.10] movie news fantasy



This adaptation has been in development for some while, about a year or so by my guess, and while I've been keeping an eye on it as it's been sitting on a production companies website, Heat Vision broke news that Chris Wedge, best known for Ice Age and a whole host of kiddie films, will be directing and co-writing with Adam Kline.

While I haven't read the book, I envisioned a dark film based on the below synopsis, and with Wedge on board I'm thinking this might be going the opposite direction. It's going to be live action but heavy on the effects (obviously) and I don't want Hellboy. I want a Lynchian gloom coupled with an oblique ununderstandable dog mind. Here's hoping they do something good with it or we won't be reporting on it anymore.


Here's the rundown from one of the production companies:
Based on Kirsten Bakis’ first and only novel, LIVES OF THE MONSTER DOGS is meant to stand out as one of the most original fairytales of our time.

Dark and haunting, the novel that inspires the film is meant to be remembered like no other: a spellbinding tale that both creates its own fully realized world perspective and provides an incisive look at the ways that humans and animals resemble each other.

A group of elegant monster dogs in top hats, tails, and bustle skirts become instant celebrities when they land, totally unexpected, in New York city on a cold winter night sometime in the near future.

Refugees from a town whose residents had been utterly isolated for a hundred years, the dogs retain the nineteenth-century Germanic culture of the humans who created them. They are wealthy and glamorous and seem to lead charmed lives – but they find adjusting to the modern world difficult, and when a young woman, Cleo Pira, befriends them, she discovers that a strange, incurable illness threatens them all with extinction.

When the dogs construct their dream home, a fantastic castle on the Lower East Side, and barricade themselves inside, Cleo finds herself one of the few human witnesses to a mad, lavish party that may prove to be the final act in the drama of the lives of the strange creatures.

An epic tale of romance and utter madness, LIVES OF THE MONSTER DOGS may indeed be the final epilogue on the destiny of the human kind…

More as it comes! Well, unless it's some kiddie crap.

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votre (2 years ago) Reply

You really should read the book. If you do, you'll discover there is scant opportunity to make a kiddie-film out of the story it tells.

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