We’re always happy to catch up with Shane Meadows, especially when he dishes out great news, which seems to be every time we meet. This year’s Edinburgh international Film Festival was certainly no exception, when at the end of a fascinating interview, alongside mate & star Paddy Considine, he was able to confirm a rumour which has been floating about for the last few months: his upcoming horror film will indeed be called Beware The Devil.
“Yeah, I’ve got the rights sorted now, so it’s not such a hidden thing,” he told **Empire **over the course of a long chat about his latest film and festival entry Le Donk & Scoz-ayz-ee. “It’s based on a book of the same name, based on the life of a guy who, by getting involved with ouija boards and the occult by trying to disprove it, trying to take the piss out of it, got possessed, had to be exorcised, and later became an exorcist himself. The guy it happened to has died, but his son’s a novelist, and he helped him turn it into a book before he passed away, and now I’m working with him to turn it into a film.”
Beware The Devil, though, which has previously been described to us by Meadows as “making Dead Man’s Shoes look like Play School”, is one of what the filmmaker is now referring to as his ‘bigger’ films (the inference being that he will be making more ‘smaller’ films as part of his Five Day Feature initiative, a la Le Donk & Scorz-ayz-ee) and is currently second on a busy production slate as director.
“Yeah, the big news is that we’re already thinking about doing another Le Donk. It’ll be another ‘Le Donk And...’, something completely not music based. We’ve come up with a few ideas, and we might just go straight back and do another one, because we had such a laugh doing this one. Not like a sequel in terms of trying to be like the other one, but he’s got his missus and his kid’s a bit older, and a whole different set of events. So maybe before I do this next big film, might just go out, grab five days somewhere and knock another out so we can come back (to Edinburgh) next year."
"So it’ll be something like Le Donk & The Tomb Of The Cursed Fanny,” and we’ll stress that title was right off the top of his head “and then Beware The Devil. Two complete poles apart opposites, but I think it’s important to keep people guessing a bit, rather than doing the sort of Mickey Shyamalan thing where he does eight scary ones in a row, with the spooky twist at the end.”
So there you have it, and we’re sure Shane will appreciate M. Night’s refreshing change of pace with The Last Airbender...