James Wan’s Call of Cthulhu - Howie goes to Hollywood

[XYZpdq Jr.]

When I read the line, "The professor had been stricken whilst returning from the Newport boat. Falling suddenly as witnesses said after having been jostled by a Nautical-looking Negro" in Call of Cthulhu I almost fucking died laughing. You will never read that in another book.

I mean, beyond the gamer words.
yes his love of gamer words is a source of joy too, but he really has a knack for working with English in prose and poem

 

[The Nothingness]

Maybe instead adapting Lovecraft works that dealt with cosmic horror, make a faithful adaptation of The Rats in the Wall or The Horror at Red Hook.

 

[The Internet Dick]

Lovecraft is unadaptable,

I would still give anything to see a film adaptation of Lovecraft's novella (unpublished in his lifetime), The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.

Comes to that, imagine a Randolph Carter series.

Hey, I can dream too, you know.

 

[IDanceonTrannyGraves]

It’s still in the early stages of creation, but with speculation about how the Cthulhu Mythos could be the next Marvel cash cow

That will never happen with Lovecraft's background.

 

[Cherry Eyed Hamster]

That will never happen with Lovecraft's background.

We can only hope.

 

[Sinner's Sandwich]

That will never happen with Lovecraft's background.

This didn't stop Marvel from using the austrian painter and his minions for their comics & movies.

I'd say it's going to be some Dr. Strange garbage. The Necronomicon falls into his hands and then all sorts of eldritch but still boring marvel monsters appear and in the end he is going to fight against Cthulhu.

 

[Cherry Eyed Hamster]

I'd say it's going to be some Dr. Strange garbage. The Necronomicon falls into his hands and then all sorts of eldritch but still boring marvel monsters appear and in the end he is going to fight against Cthulhu.

I'll give the benefit of the doubt that Wan will attempt to actually follow the story but there's a good chance that Cthulhu will be reduced to a kaiju, who in his CGI glory chases Johansen in a Marvel-esque battle sequence until Johansen, utilizing the last of his strength, rams the boat into Cthulhu's head. It's something August Derleth would be satisfied with.

If this is not how it's done, then I will be particularly impressed.

 

[Estate]

Will they be using the old way of speaking?
Because seeing "queer" every few paragraphs sure was funny when I read Lovecraft's books.

 

[Cherry Eyed Hamster]

Because seeing "queer" every few paragraphs sure was funny when I read Lovecraft's books.

I can see them deliberately misinterpreting the context this word was used in and making half the characters in the film flaming alphabet fags.

Outside of the cultists ofc.

 

[Male Idiot]

The old HPL society movies were fun. I thought they just aged out, and not went full jogger.

Still, I don't have any hopes for any hollyweird movie.

Also how does it work? Isn't he in the public domain? Can they re-trademark his works? A type of shit Disney pulled with european folk tales?

 

[Cherry Eyed Hamster]

Isn't he in the public domain? Can they re-trademark his works?

I’ve actually read that Hollywood hasn’t done many adaptations of Lovecraft because they would struggle to copyright his material. I know Chaosium trademarked Call of Cthulhu for their TTRPG/CRPG franchise, but I don’t think they could legally trademark The Call of Cthulhu since that’s public domain.

A type of shit Disney pulled with european folk tales?

Disney technically didn’t copyright the folk tales since they’re public domain, they just copyrighted and trademarked their own interpretations. You can still adapt Cinderella but you couldn’t have Cinderella’s stepsisters be two girls named Anastasia and Drusilla. Or have an evil, horned fairy in a Sleeping Beauty adaptation named Maleficent.

Hollywood would probably have to go the route Chaosium and Disney did, and that’s add their own creative elements to make it uniquely theirs.

 

[robobobo]

I think we're too jaded as a society for most of Lovecraft's stuff to really work today. I remember reports about old horror flicks like The Exorcist being so disturbing for the time that audiences were vomiting and fainting, but they're dull and quaint by modern standards. A lot of the various aliens he wrote about would simply fail to be particularly scary to an audience if they were reproduced faithfully to his descriptions; a Mi-Go is downright cuddly compared to the xenomorphs from Aliens. Then you have the unknowns where he was being intentionally vague and didn't describe something, which may or may not fly for a movie depending on the specifics. In the case of Color out of Space, it was unavoidable to show a color, which as people noted was just purple, but since it's impossible to come up with a new color in the spectrum they had to pick something.

I believe the best thing to do is to make original stories that follow Lovecraft's vibes rather than actually try to make his stuff work as a movie. The Thing, In the Mouth of Madness, Event Horizon, etc., made from the ground up to be cinematic and came across better than I think a lot of his stories would.

 

[Sinner's Sandwich]

With the rise of AI people will have the abillity make their own Lovecraft movies without meddling from Hollyweird movie studios and its braindead suits.

 

[Cherry Eyed Hamster]

I think we're too jaded as a society for most of Lovecraft's stuff to really work today. I remember reports about old horror flicks like The Exorcist being so disturbing for the time that audiences were vomiting and fainting, but they're dull and quaint by modern standards. A lot of the various aliens he wrote about would simply fail to be particularly scary to an audience if they were reproduced faithfully to his descriptions; a Mi-Go is downright cuddly compared to the xenomorphs from Aliens. Then you have the unknowns where he was being intentionally vague and didn't describe something, which may or may not fly for a movie depending on the specifics. In the case of Color out of Space, it was unavoidable to show a color, which as people noted was just purple, but since it's impossible to come up with a new color in the spectrum they had to pick something.

This makes me sad because there’s a partial truth to it. Modernity has made people lose more of their imagination.

 

[DapperShark]

James Wan is a hack and even if this wasn't guaranteed to be pozzed to hell due to Current Year+10 he would still be one of the worst choices as he's only capable of generic jumpscare trash. People have mentioned Guillermo Del Toro and Robert Eggers and I agree those two are about the only ones I could see pulling off a Lovecraft adaptation.

Anyway, we can but hope that if this goes ahead it will be true to Lovecraft. We will probably never see Guilermo del Toro's At the Mountains of Madness which might have been our best ever hope to get a real big budget Lovecraft adaptation by someone who really cares about it. For which we can blame Peter Jackson who I will probably punch in the mouth because of it if I ever meet him

Why Peter Jackson? As far as I know Del Toro's ATMoM got canned because he's a genuine Lovecraft turboautist who refused to compromise the story's integrity when the studio demanded he add a romance plot and other dumb bullshit to make it more normie friendly and because Prometheus failed and they felt the subject matter was too similar, so if there's a director you should be punching it's Ridley Scott.

 

[Overly Serious]

Why Peter Jackson? As far as I know Del Toro's ATMoM got canned because he's a genuine Lovecraft turboautist who refused to compromise the story's integrity when the studio demanded he add a romance plot and other dumb bullshit to make it more normie friendly and because Prometheus failed and they felt the subject matter was too similar, so if there's a director you should be punching it's Ridley Scott.

I don't know any of that other stuff though I've heard the story about Prometheus being similar before. What I recall was an interview with Guillermo del Torro where he was slated to direct the Hobbit because Peter Jackson had declined it. And del Torro had a deal lined up to do AtMoM but then passed it up when he was offered the Hobbit. And then Jackson said "oh no - has to be me directing it!" and took it back by which time AtMoM had passed for some reason.

Perhaps I misremember. It was a while ago. That's what I recall though. In which case it's a double-whammy because in addition to losing del Torro doing Lovecraft we also lost out on a del Torro Hobbit movie which frankly, probably would have been better. (Though I did like Martin Freeman as Bilbo).

 

[Shart Attack]

I'm really looking forward to the scene where a crew more diverse than the Burger King Kids Club steers a CGI boat into a CGI Cthulhu in the CGI ocean with the CGI city of R'lyeh in the background. I'm curious which biracial lesbian actress they're going to cast as Gustaf Johansen.

I hate to sound like such a cynical prick, but I've had enough of diverse casts taking CGI shits on things I like for one lifetime. I'm so unbelievably weary of CGI shit in front of green screens. Del Toro has a documented fondness for practical effects, so maybe he would've built one or two sound stages and at least had a fat guy in a mo-cap suit stand in for Cthulhu. In Wan's hands, I just expect it to look like a shitty PS3 game. They're already advertising a video game tie-in, which doesn't strike me as something that would be announced so far ahead of a movie with even the slightest bit of heart and soul put into it. It just comes off as corporate, by-committee, and commodified as fuck. I have zero hope this will be anything but terrible.

 

[Cherry Eyed Hamster]

I'm really looking forward to the scene where a crew more diverse than the Burger King Kids Club steers a CGI boat into a CGI Cthulhu in the CGI ocean with the CGI city of R'lyeh in the background. I'm curious which biracial lesbian actress they're going to cast as Gustaf Johansen.

It's biracial lesb*an actress, bigot

I hate to sound like such a cynical prick, but I've had enough of diverse casts taking CGI shits on things I like for one lifetime. I'm so unbelievably weary of CGI shit in front of green screens. Del Toro has a documented fondness for practical effects, so maybe he would've built one or two sound stages and at least had a fat guy in a mo-cap suit stand in for Cthulhu. In Wan's hands, I just expect it to look like a shitty PS3 game. They're already advertising a video game tie-in, which doesn't strike me as something that would be announced so far ahead of a movie with even the slightest bit of heart and soul put into it. It just comes off as corporate, by-committee, and commodified as fuck. I have zero hope this will be anything but terrible.

I had some cautious optimism at first, but upon learning more about the Chinese-American investment company that's backing this movie, along with said company spending billions of dollars to get into "comic book, video game, virtual reality, and AI", as well as adapting a slew of video games for media that hasn't even been released yet...it's corporate from the very beginning.

 

[Overly Serious]

It's biracial lesb*an actress, bigot

I had some cautious optimism at first, but upon learning more about the Chinese-American investment company that's backing this movie, along with said company spending billions of dollars to get into "comic book, video game, virtual reality, and AI", as well as adapting a slew of video games for media that hasn't even been released yet...it's corporate from the very beginning.

Then the time to create push back is now, when they're still gathering investment.

 

[ShamefurDispray]

Ive been kicking this around in my head since the thread was posted. One of the few "adaptions" of Lovecraft that I felt knocked it out of the park was the game Bloodborne. And you could claim it was more inspired by, than an adaption of, and you'd probably be correct.
In Bloodborne you can tell they loved Lovecraft's work so much that they didn't want to copy and paste things they liked. Instead the developers carried the spirit of his writing over. I won't sperg about it here even though it's tempting to give examples. But they even managed to tie basic gameplay mechanics to concepts of Lovecraft's work.

Anyway what I'm trying to say is the reason that I feel alot of adaptions of Lovecraft seem to fall so flat is that whoever is creating it them tends to use the mythos as a crutch. We have to see R'yleh, we have to see deep ones, hell sometimes we have to see things that are supposed to drive us mad, but without the spirit and ideas of what made those concepts so interesting.

As someone in the thread pointed out earlier: It's why movies like "The Thing" feel much more like a Lovecraft story than other direct adaptions.