Sunday was Halloween, also known to some as John Carpenter Day. So it seems only appropriate that Carpenter should be announcing a new horror project, particularly since this one features a female heroine, around this time. He’s agreed to take on Darkchylde, which will be adapted from Randy Queen’s comic book series.
Queen launched the comics back in the late 1990s and has become a healthy franchise in its own right, even if it never quite rose to the recognition level of, say, Spawn.
The plot follows Ariel Chylde, a young woman cursed with horrible recurring nightmares. But she soon discovers that her problems are just beginning as she starts to become the creatures she dreams about, transforming into demonic beings with different powers.
“Randy Queen’s hijacked angel, Ariel Chylde, is the best young female character since Laurie Strode in Halloween,” says Carpenter in the press release, picked up by Collider. “Bringing Ariel and her dark mysteries to life should be quite an adventure for us all.”
“I’m beyond thrilled that John Carpenter, one of our most important, and legendary genre directors, and the man responsible for such landmark films as The Thing and Halloween has come onboard with Weta Workshop to help bring the nightmarish tale of Ariel Chylde to the silver screen,” Queen gushes. “As a horror fan, the thought of Carpenter and Weta together, beautiful dreamscapes, and multiple transformations, makes me incredibly excited. There is a reason nearly his entire catalogue has, or is being remade, and it’s because Carpenter is a genius.”
The Weta team actually got involved before Carpenter ever did, helping Queen and wife Sarah (who are co-producing the movie with Carpenter and his own wife/partner Sandy King) to craft some test footage of Ariel in mid-transformation.
There’s no word on a shooting plan, casting or release date yet, but Carpenter already has Amber Heard-starring chiller The Ward making the rounds at festivals and aiming to drum up some interest and snare a distributor…