Yorgos Lanthimos is no stranger to weird movies that happily mix tones and genres. Fresh off his critically acclaimed The Favourite, there seems to be no reason to stop doing his thing now. Thus, the director is reportedly in talks to direct an adaptation of the absurd novel, The Hawkline Monster.
Written by black comedy writer Richard Brautigan, the book revolves around two gunslingers in the old west who are hired by a young woman named Magic Child to deal with something in her house. That something turns out to be a monster – or is it? – that lives beneath the Hawkline home in a series of ice caves.
The novel is a bizarre yet fascinating hybrid between western, horror, fantasy, and surreal comedy, which sounds so perfect for Lanthimos it’s a surprise he hasn’t already made this film. However, he’s far from the first director to try and take a crack at adapting the book.
Hal Ashby attempted to make the film for a couple of decades, with stars such as Jack Nicholson, Harry Dean Stanton and Jeff Bridges attached at one point or another, but he could never get it made despite a screenplay written by Brautigan himself. Tim Burton then naturally tried to make his version, with Nicholson attached again alongside Clint Eastwood, but that also fell through.
Can Lanthimos succeed where those other directors couldn’t? It’s possible that producers back in the days of Ashby and even Burton’s prime couldn’t see the profitability of The Hawkline Monster. Now that Lanthimos is a successful brand unto himself, it might be a lot easier to get the green light.
We’ll see. Lanthimos will be fine if this falls through though, as he’s got a TV adaptation of crime book The Man In The Rockefeller Suit in the works, along with a film adaptation of the Jim Thompson novel, Pop. 1280 in development.
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