When the Dark comes rising...

...sixguns shall turn it back?

Hollywood may be about to dump all over one of my favourite books. According to mevennen, The Dark is Rising appears to be getting a mostly American cast. Some mousing around also finds that the scheduled director thinks of himself as a 'missionary' to Hollywood and makes 'biblical, values-based' movies.

Now, Walden Media were responsible for the production of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Charlotte's Web, both of which have been gracefully done, on the whole. On the other hand there is all kinds of scope for a director who is not in tune with books like the Dark is Rising sequence to make an unholy mess of them, especially if he tries to use them to preach.

One of the things that I hope will not happen would be for them to make Will into a Harry Potter-style central hero. Another thing would be for them to lose all of the Arthurian and Celtic mythology from the stories, which I frankly can't see surviving if it's getting Americanised. And as others have said, the books each have such a strong sense of place that it would be impossible to transplant them without gutting them completely. Wicker Man, anyone?

I blame myself. I've wanted to write adaptations of these books since I read them when I was thirteen. I should have gone ahead and done it.