New Republic Pictures & Laeta Kalogridis Option Adam Roche Podcast ‘The Secret History Of Hollywood’
Writer-Producer Laeta Kalogridis and New Republic Pictures’ President Bradley Fischer have taken the film and television rights to the entire library of Adam Roche’s podcast, The Secret History of Hollywood.
The deal encompasses 11 existing seasons, as well as any future seasons of series. The team plans to approach the podcast as individual seasons and will develop each story as its own piece of IP.
The debut season of the podcast, entitled Shadows, will be the focus of the first project under the deal. Being developed into a feature film, Shadows will focus on the life of Val Lewton, a gifted immigrant producer who began his Hollywood career as the right-hand man of David O. Selznick, and who rescued the fortunes of Rko Studios by devising a revolutionary approach to horror movies – defying the conventional schlock formula to create a brooding, artistic body of work that has gone on to...
The deal encompasses 11 existing seasons, as well as any future seasons of series. The team plans to approach the podcast as individual seasons and will develop each story as its own piece of IP.
The debut season of the podcast, entitled Shadows, will be the focus of the first project under the deal. Being developed into a feature film, Shadows will focus on the life of Val Lewton, a gifted immigrant producer who began his Hollywood career as the right-hand man of David O. Selznick, and who rescued the fortunes of Rko Studios by devising a revolutionary approach to horror movies – defying the conventional schlock formula to create a brooding, artistic body of work that has gone on to...
- 6/10/2021
- by Anthony D'Alessandro
- Deadline Film + TV
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By Hank Reineke
All evidence suggests that Mark Robson was producer Val Lewton’s “go to” director. Or, at the very least, for his celebrated series of psychological horror and mystery films released by Rko Radio Pictures 1943-1946. Of the six thrillers produced, Robson would helm no fewer than four (The Seventh Victim (1943), Ghost Ship (1943), Isle of the Dead (1945) and Bedlam (1946). The latter two are perhaps the best remembered of the four as both would feature free-agent boogeyman Boris Karloff in a starring role. Though the first of the Lewton horrors, The Cat People (1942, directed by Jacques Tourneur) is likely the best celebrated of the six films overall, I’ve always held a special fondness for Isle of the Dead. Now, revisiting the film with this stunning Blu ray transfer, I’m as impressed as ever with Robson’s claustrophobic direction, the thoughtful...
By Hank Reineke
All evidence suggests that Mark Robson was producer Val Lewton’s “go to” director. Or, at the very least, for his celebrated series of psychological horror and mystery films released by Rko Radio Pictures 1943-1946. Of the six thrillers produced, Robson would helm no fewer than four (The Seventh Victim (1943), Ghost Ship (1943), Isle of the Dead (1945) and Bedlam (1946). The latter two are perhaps the best remembered of the four as both would feature free-agent boogeyman Boris Karloff in a starring role. Though the first of the Lewton horrors, The Cat People (1942, directed by Jacques Tourneur) is likely the best celebrated of the six films overall, I’ve always held a special fondness for Isle of the Dead. Now, revisiting the film with this stunning Blu ray transfer, I’m as impressed as ever with Robson’s claustrophobic direction, the thoughtful...
- 5/25/2021
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Isle of the Dead
Blu ray
Warner Archive
1945 / 1.33:1 / 72 min.
Starring Boris Karloff, Ellen Drew, Katherine Emery
Cinematography by Jack MacKenzie
Directed by Mark Robson
The Swiss symbolist Arnold Böcklin produced several versions of Isle of the Dead in the late 1800’s—none of them suggested a typical tourist attraction but more than a few artists used that gloomy seascape as a port of inspiration; Rachmaninov composed a symphony, Dalí produced a surrealist tribute, and Strindberg sketched the fragments of a play, Toten-Insel. There’s even a hint of the painting’s portentous cliffs in Welles’ Xanadu. In 1945, Val Lewton, Mr. Dark Shadows himself, conceived an entire film built around Böcklin’s haunted island.
Directed by Mark Robson, Isle of the Dead is thematically rich, even for a Lewton project; set in Greece at the end of the Balkan wars, a plague joins forces with the supernatural to wreak havoc...
Blu ray
Warner Archive
1945 / 1.33:1 / 72 min.
Starring Boris Karloff, Ellen Drew, Katherine Emery
Cinematography by Jack MacKenzie
Directed by Mark Robson
The Swiss symbolist Arnold Böcklin produced several versions of Isle of the Dead in the late 1800’s—none of them suggested a typical tourist attraction but more than a few artists used that gloomy seascape as a port of inspiration; Rachmaninov composed a symphony, Dalí produced a surrealist tribute, and Strindberg sketched the fragments of a play, Toten-Insel. There’s even a hint of the painting’s portentous cliffs in Welles’ Xanadu. In 1945, Val Lewton, Mr. Dark Shadows himself, conceived an entire film built around Böcklin’s haunted island.
Directed by Mark Robson, Isle of the Dead is thematically rich, even for a Lewton project; set in Greece at the end of the Balkan wars, a plague joins forces with the supernatural to wreak havoc...
- 3/30/2021
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
Val Lewton’s third horror film, The Leopard Man (1943) initially seemed promising. Based on Cornell Woolrich’s novel Black Alibi, it had more pedigree than Lewton’s previous movies. He reunited his previous team: director Jacques Tourneur, writer Ardel Wray, even Dynamite, the black leopard from Cat People. Forced again to film on the Rko lot, he sent Wray to photograph Santa Fe, New Mexico and crafted meticulous sets around her snapshots. Despite this attention to detail, The Leopard Man is one of Lewton’s weakest efforts.
The plot is simple enough. Nightclub entertainers James (Dennis O’Keefe) and Kiki (Jean Brooks) arrive in Santa Fe with a leopard in tow; Kiki’s rival Clo-Clo (Margo) scares the cat, which escapes into the city. The leopard kills a Mexican girl, sending the city into a panic. Several other women die, but James grows convinced that the leopard isn’t behind them.
The plot is simple enough. Nightclub entertainers James (Dennis O’Keefe) and Kiki (Jean Brooks) arrive in Santa Fe with a leopard in tow; Kiki’s rival Clo-Clo (Margo) scares the cat, which escapes into the city. The leopard kills a Mexican girl, sending the city into a panic. Several other women die, but James grows convinced that the leopard isn’t behind them.
- 10/13/2015
- by Christopher Saunders
- SoundOnSight
Val Lewton, Russian émigré turned horror master, was a reporter, pulp novelist and MGM publicity writer before moving into film. He spent the 1930s as David O. Selznick’s story editor, directing second unit work on A Tale of Two Cities (1935) and script doctoring Gone With the Wind (1939), warning Selznick it would be “the mistake of his life.” While not Hollywood’s most prescient man, Lewton’s professionalism earned Selznick’s respect, and their collaboration led to Rko offering Lewton a producing job in 1942.
Rko was reeling from Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons, an expensive flop forcing a refocus on low budget films. Charles Koerner headed the studio’s B Unit, envisioning a horror series inspired by Universal Studio’s successful franchises. Where Universal culled from established literature (Dracula, Frankenstein), Rko worked from Koerner’s whim: he created a title and left the filmmakers to handle trivia like plot and characters.
Rko was reeling from Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons, an expensive flop forcing a refocus on low budget films. Charles Koerner headed the studio’s B Unit, envisioning a horror series inspired by Universal Studio’s successful franchises. Where Universal culled from established literature (Dracula, Frankenstein), Rko worked from Koerner’s whim: he created a title and left the filmmakers to handle trivia like plot and characters.
- 10/6/2015
- by Christopher Saunders
- SoundOnSight
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