Director J.D. Dillard has gotten a lot of press for projects that he was attached to, but they fell apart. There was a remake of The Fly, a Star Wars movie and a sequel to The Rocketeer… But while those high-profile projects have gotten away from him, he has managed to make a few movies in recent years: the sci-fi crime drama Sleight, the creature feature Sweetheart, and the Korean War movie Devotion. He has also directed episodes of Utopia, The Twilight Zone, The Outsider, and Two Sentence Horror Stories. Now, Deadline reports that Dillard has signed on to direct an adaptation of the 2023 sci-fi thriller novel The Strange, which was written by Nathan Ballingrud. Aisha Porter-Christie is writing the screenplay and the project is set up at Black Label Media, the company that also produced Devotion.
Ballingrud’s novel is set in New Galveston, Mars in the year 1931. In the desolate frontier of a Martian colony, 14-year-old Anabelle Crisp embarks on a perilous quest through the desert, vowing revenge on the man who doomed her father to the gallows and stole her prized possession — the last known recording of her mother’s voice. The book is said to evoke the gritty, lawless atmosphere of True Grit combined with the raw intensity of Mad Max, following a young girl’s relentless search for justice as she battles ruthless outlaws and haunting mysteries on the rugged, untamed Martian landscape.
Dillard is producing The Strange with David Eisenberg, as well as Black Label Media’s Molly Smith, Rachel Smith, Thad Luckinbill, and Trent Luckinbill. Black Label is providing the financing.
Aisha Porter-Christie is co-showrunner of the Amazon MGM Studios series Citizen, a series from John Wick and Nobody writer Derek Kolstad. She has also previously worked as a consulting producer on the Marvel / Netflix (now on Disney+) series Daredevil and as a co-executive producer on Amazon’s Gen V.
Ballingrud’s other works include Crypt of the Moon Spider, North American Lake Monsters, and Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell. His novella The Visible Filth was turned into the 2019 film Wounds, directed by Babak Anvari.
Does The Strange sound like an interesting project to you? Let us know by leaving a comment below – and if you have read the Nathan Ballingrud novel, let us know what you thought of it!