Lovecraft Expanded Universe.

[Alex]

Can't remember if I posted this before or not. As much as I'd like to see something like this I can't help thinking it would end up being terribad.

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2018/06/an-expanded-hp-lovecraft-cinematic-universe-may-be.html?fbclid=IwAR3Zp60Ixk6yxcBE5hCNebLnV5x3Hlx-UuiHDXwU0nEauETLnEVNAKn880E

[Bushma]

I've seen this before, but I don't recall where.  I'm excited about the idea it has potential, but I worry about the execution of it.  Let's face it, Lovecraft themed films have been B movies and they worked well in that context.  You try to make a big budget, Hollywood, Lovecraft film and I don't imagine it would work.

I'm hoping with low expectations.

[Alex]

I hope they start small and build up rather than trying to establish everything all at once. I feel that was part of the problem for both DC and Universal. Concentrate on one good story and have a little bit of world building around that.

[Archivist]

Lovecraft Expanded Universe??

Okay, this... isn't going to work. Lovecraft stories, although widely known, aren't popular if that makes sense. Like, how many regular filmgoers who watched Re-Animator or From Beyond actually read the original stories, or read more widely into the bigger stories like The Mountains Of Madness, the Randolph Carter stories, etc?

(Aside: Barbara Crampton was HOT in From Beyond, and I think even appeared in a Playboy pictorial themed around her Lovecraft film appearances.)

Warning: NSFW

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Lovecraft's prose is notoriously dense, which raises the entry barrier for the casual reader. He was reclusive, a prodigious reader, and spoke in a manner of someone from the Victorian era, despite being in a time long after.

Neither Re Animator nor From Beyond really followed the Lovecraft stories, either. They were really horrored-up and sexed-up to make them ideal B movie material, but is that going to work today?

Thirdly, a Lovecraft universe needs to have crossovers and continuity, and that means either creating/rewriting characters that will appear across multiple movies, or sufficiently juice up the villains (Cthulhu, Azathoth, the Witch of the Witch House) so that they hold interest enough to be sustained across movies.

For a big budget Hollywood take, I can actually see The Call Of Cthulhu working. Take a small band of protagonists, maybe make them military like in Battleship, have them discover worshippers of the dreaming god who are actively trying to bring him back. Throw in some inhuman minions, big explosions and chase scenes, and it could work. Make it a mix of horror and action, in the style of a really dark Pacific Rim.

A trilogy of Randolph Carter movies could be very, very cool, but would either need to be updated for modern sensibilities, or set in the early 20th century.

There's an adaptation of Dreams In The Witch House which looks really, really bad.

[Archivist]

Oh yeah, found Barbara Crampton's Playboy pictorial from 1986. Total hotness.

Warning: NSFW

https://uncletnuc.com/2015/10/13/monster-muff/

[316zombie]

i might actually go to a real theater for a randolph carter trilogy....

[Archivist]

i might actually go to a real theater for a randolph carter trilogy....

If they did Randolph Carter properly, it would be incredible. Imagine the bizarre dream worlds he would explore, the intersection of the dream worlds and his Earth time, the realization that he is a facet of a much larger cosmic being. Wow.

[316zombie]

i would love it. and since the level of CGI expertise keeps getting better, it COULD work. being a small twisted person, i'd want an anthology of a sort, with david lynch, jim jarmusch, del toro( sorry, i can't think of his first name) and the crazy redhead as the directors. and then sequels, MANY  sequels, all in anthology style. yes, i AM twisted. 

[RCMerchant]

I think it's a stupid idea. Lovecraft wasn't about s**t blowing up. Lovecraft was about mood, not CGI and car wrecks. Perhaps why Shirley Jackson was never good movie material.

[Archivist]

I think it's a stupid idea. Lovecraft wasn't about s**t blowing up. Lovecraft was about mood, not CGI and car wrecks. Perhaps why Shirley Jackson was never good movie material.

Lovecraft was never about leather clad women being stripped by a mutated sex fiend, but that didn't stop the makers of From Beyond. By most accounts, he was asexual and only mentioned coitus in the most indirect and morbid of ways (The White Ape aka The Facts Concerning Arthur Jermyn).

TBH I can actually envision a blockbuster level Call of Cthulhu, but with brooding atmosphere mixed with the blowing up of sh**. As for CGI, how else would they represent the great sleeping one?

[chainsaw midget]

Lovecraft relies so much on things being too horrible to describe or things that man can't possibly understand that trying to make a movie out of it seems to defeat the purpose. 

It gets even worse when you factor in that the protagonists in his stories are often helpless, can't accomplish anything, and tend to go mad. 

It's not a recipe for success.  (Although it did work great in In the Mouth of Madness.)