Talk about keeping busy. Both Johnny Depp and Edgar Wright have been in the news quite a bit lately. For Wright, there was ‘Attack the Block’ with Joe Cornish, the upcoming Blood and Ice Cream movie ‘At World’s End’, and the much talked about ‘Ant-man’ movie for Marvel. For Depp, there’s “21 Jump Street’, ‘Dark Shadows’, ‘The Lone Ranger’, and more. But it appears that Disney is bringing the two fan favorites together for a film based on the 1972 TV movie and series ‘The Night Stalker’, according to Deadline.
The movie follows a tabloid reporter, Carl Kolchak (played by Darren McGavin), who covered crimes that usually involved supernatural perps like zombies, werewolves, vampires, and aliens. However, since all that seemed so far fetched, no one ever believed his stories and his editor never published them. How was he able to keep his job for a whole series if this kept happening?
Wright, most notably known for ‘Shaun of the Dead’, ‘Hot Fuzz’, and ‘Scott Pilgrim Vs the World’, should be right at home in a film like this, even though he may have to tone it down a bit to satisfy Disney’s family friendly mandate. He joins the project before a writer has been set, so he, along with Depp and Christi Dembrowski, who are producing the film under the Infinitum Nihil banner, will oversee and develop the project from square one. Johnny Depp may even end up stepping in to star in the film as well.
‘The Night Stalker’ is one of two films that Depp and Dembrowski have set up at Disney. The other one is a drama about the midnight ride of Paul Revere. Depp also has Gore Verbinski’s ‘The Lone Ranger’ alongside Armie Hammer coming up for the studio as well.
Since this film will likely take some time to come together since there’s no script yet, hopefully Edgar Wright can persuade Disney to move forward with ‘Ant-man’ in the mean time. Now that he’s signed on for the money picture, they should let him move on with the passion picture. The world needs to be introduced to Wrights version of the founding Avengers Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne!
