Seth Grahame-Smith Set For New Adaptation Of Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes”

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter novelist-turned-screenwriter Seth Gordon-Smith will be directing a new adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s classic thriller novel Something Wicked This Way Comes for Disney. The project will be his directorial debut. Gordon-Smith will write the treatment for the film, which will fleshed out into a screenplay by another writer Disney has yet to hire.

This will mark the second time that the book was adapted by the studio. The original version, from 1983, featured Jonathan Pryce as Mr. Dark, the sinister owner of a traveling carnival who grants people’s wishes and desires but at the price of their souls.

I am not sure we can call this a remake of the 1983 adaptation, as Grahame-Smith will be working from the original novel. Given that Bradbury adapted his book for the 185 movie, the temptation is certainly there, but this quote from Gordon-Smith at Deadline indicates that he is definitely looking to the book, and not the previous film, first and foremost.

I have been so crazy about this book, and it was such a formative title in my life that I actually wrote a piece on NPR about why it is so important for young males to read. It is a classic coming-of-age, father-son story about the transition from childhood to adulthood and how kids can’t wait to be adults and adults romanticize their childhoods. I’m not remaking the movie; I want the haunted atmosphere that makes the book so chilling, and I want to reinstate some of the classic scenes from the book that were missing from the ’83 film.

There’s been no announced timetable for when the film would get into production. Currently, Gordon-Smith is putting the finishing touches on his Beetlejuice sequel screenplay for Tim Burton.