Richard Stanley is a director who might be known for being fired from the 1996 version of THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU a few days into filming just as much as (or more than) he's known for directing the films HARDWARE (pictured above) and DUST DEVIL. The MOREAU debacle had a major impact on the career he was building at that time, now Stanley is long overdue for a comeback and the H.P. Lovecraft adaptation he's working on may be it.
It's been three years since we shared the news that Stanley was planning to direct a film based on Lovecraft's THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE, in which
an unnamed narrator pieces together the story of an area known by the locals as the "blasted heath" in the wild hills west of Arkham, Massachusetts. The narrator discovers that many years ago a meteorite crashed there, draining the life force from anything living nearby; vegetation grows large, but tasteless, animals are driven mad and deformed into grotesque shapes, and the people go insane or die one by one.
THE COLOUR OF SPACE is set up at the production company SpectreVision, and according to the company's co-founder Josh C. Waller the project may be just about ready to move into production. Speaking with Birth.Movies.Death., Waller said,
It’s moving along. We announced that we were going to be doing it, what, three years ago? Let’s just say that we’re getting a lot closer. Significantly closer. Like, it’s coming up, so I will be busy with Richard on set with that sometime in the near future."
Waller also promises that Stanley's experience with SpectreVision won't be a repeat of what he went through on MOREAU.
He got a bad rep because of what happened on MOREAU, and to me, MOREAU is nothing more than an example of bad producing. It’s not his fault, what happened there, and when you watch [David Gregory’s documentary] LOST SOUL, you’re like, ‘You f*cking assholes, throwing him under the bus!’ It was an opportunity for some experienced producers and studio execs to work with a gifted young filmmaker, and help cradle him into the next phase of his career — not to be like, ‘Huh, why does this little gifted indie filmmaker not know how to handle all this money and all this pressure?’ It’s like, ‘Well, of course he f*ckin’ doesn’t know how to handle this shit. He’s never done this before.’ You’ve got to nurture, and it hurt him for many years. Not just in the public eye, but I think it hurt him; it instilled in him a bit of doubt that he didn’t have the vision he clearly has. So part of our main goal with COLOUR will be to let him know that all producers aren’t dicks, and that some of us actually, 100 percent just want what’s best for him and the film."
That sounds great to me, I would love to see this project turn out to be a triumphant return for Stanley.
SpectreVision's MANDY was released in theatres and on VOD today.