'Hardware' director Richard Stanley to adapt H.P. Lovecraft story

Indie-horror company SpectreVision has confirmed that it will produce Richard Stanley’s new film, Color Out of Space, his first movie since 1992’s Dust Devil. The film is an adaptation of famed “weird” author H.P. Lovecraft’s short story, “The Colour Out of Space,” about a meteorite that drives people insane. Stanley will direct and pen the screenplay for the project, which he has been working on for several years. “There needs to be a scary Lovecraft movie,” Stanley said last year. “I want to make a bad trip film and ‘The Colour…’ definitely has what it takes to be a very, very bad trip indeed.”

“H.P. Lovecraft is the undisputed father of literary horror, and yet, bafflingly, there has yet to be a cinematic treatment that captures the dark beauty of the man’s oeuvre,” said SpectreVision cofounder Daniel Noah, in a statement. “Richard Stanley’s note perfect adaptation of Color Out of Space represents an epiphany for me — as it no doubt will be for legions of Lovecraft devotees around the world.”

Casting is currently underway on Color Out of Space and the plan is for the project to start shooting in early 2016.

Stanley made a splash with his 1990 killer-droid debut, Hardware, but, after Dust Devil, was fired from 1996’s The Island of Dr. Moreau, only to return to the set disguised as one of the production’s man-animal extras. While Stanley has directed documentaries and short films since that disastrous chapter (which was recently detailed in David Gregory’s documentary, Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr, Moreau), he has not been able to get another feature off the ground — until now.

Despite his slim body of work, Stanley is revered by many younger genre filmmakers. “He’s really an artist,” Hostel director Eli Roth recently told EW. “I would love to see Richard come out with another narrative feature. “He’s just a fabulous, fabulous creator.”

SpectreVision was founded in 2010 by Noah, director Josh C. Waller, and actor Elijah Wood. Its previous productions include the vampire film A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, this summer’s making-of-a-serial-killer drama The Boy, and the currently-in-cinemas horror-comedy Cooties. The three SpectreVision founders will today deliver the keynote address at Fantastic Market, the genre market of Fantastic Fest in Austin, Tex.

•Return to The Island of Dr. Moreau

•Elijah Wood talks Cooties and ‘f–ked up’ Greasy Strangler

•Kurt Russell western Bone Tomahawk chosen as Fantastic Fest closing night film