SpectreVision Wants to Make a Lovecraft Movie Universe with Richard Stanley

Yesterday, RLJE films dropped the first trailer for Color Out of Space, and much joy was shared throughout the land. In the article, I tried to impart upon you guys how killer Richard Stanley‘s of Lovecraftian terror is, and oh boy, the gods have been unusually kind considering the subject matter because there might be more Stanley + Lovecraft movies on the way.

ComingSoon caught up with SpectreVision duo Elijah Wood and Daniel Noah, who produced Color Out of Space, and confirmed that they are hoping to “build out a Lovecraft universe” with Stanley. How big of a universe? Well, they’re hoping there’s “enough of an appetite for these things, and we can keep them going and make at least three of them.”

But the good news doesn’t end there, my friends. Noah and Wood revealed that they’re in early development on an adaptation of The Dunwich Horror, a key story in the Cthulu Mythos that taps into the more monster-y side of Lovecraft’s universe.

Noah spoke about what made Stanely’s approach to Lovecraft’s horror, which is oft-adapted but too often missing that sense of cosmic dread — so special,

“Lovecraft is possibly the most adapted horror author ever…but there’s really never been a totally faithful adaptation of any of his works. I think there are a few that are sort of close. One of them is the German version of Color Out of Space that came out a few years ago. Stuart Gordon’s films are wonderful, but they are more Stuart Gordon than they are Lovecraft. We had been hellbent on finding the Lovecraft adaptation that truly captured cosmic dread without the camp. When we encountered Richard Stanley’s script, I remember texting Elijah after I read the first page and said, ‘This is it. We found it.’ When you see this film, you’ll see that there are all kinds of little references that are allusions to other Lovecraft stories.”

Noah also honed in on the essence of Loecraft that makes him so challenging to adapt, saying.

“You experience it through their eyes and ears, and that can be a very abstract, psychedelic experience. That is the case with Color Out of Space, the third act is absolute chaos. I mean, sensory overload to the point where you have people after this film saying I don’t even really understand what happened the last 30 minutes, but boy was it overwhelming. And that’s Lovecraft. You don’t know what happens. The gods don’t stop to tell insignificant beings what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. We’re just ants on the bottom of someone’s shoe. And we never get to know. That’s Lovecraft’s thesis, and personally we don’t think it is impossible to tell on screen.”

Bottom line, as someone who’s dying to see Stanley’s take on a rampaging, otherworldy barn-monster, please please please go see Color Out of Space because we may not deserve a Lovecraftian cinematic universe, but we’ve sure been waiting long enough to see it happen.