Timur Bekmambetov building cinematic universe based on Stan Lee horror stories

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8l4OCyYsYM

Wanted and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter director Timur Bekmambetov and his production banner Bazelevs are teaming with Ara Keshishian’s ZQ Entertainment and the late Stan Lee’s POW! Entertainment to develop what Deadline describes as “a new cinematic universe based on the unexploited horror works by Stan Lee.”

The companies have hired Pet Sematary (2019) directors Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer to write a screenplay based on Lee’s story Carnival of Killers, which is “set amid the Dust Bowl storms that ravaged the American Great Plains in the 1930s” and centers on

a young girl with psychic abilities who senses that the traveling carnival she and her mother sought refuge in is ground zero for a looming alien invasion.

Meanwhile, Matt Greenberg – whose writing credits include Halloween H20 and three Stephen King adaptations (1408, Mercy, and Kölsch and Widmyer’s Pet Sematary) – will be writing Sawbones, which follows

a frail 12-year old, Alex Covin, who reads a mysterious comic book and is transported into the comic’s terrifying world: a haunted Juvenile Detention Center overrun by demonic forces led by Sawbones, a homicidal entity who preys upon the troubled inmates. Has Alex gone insane? Or is this nightmarish world his new reality? If he is to escape, Alex must find a way to defeat Sawbones, but he quickly comes to realize that Sawbones is the keeper of his darkness and the personification of all his fears.

POW! Entertainment will be executive producing Carnival of Killers and Sawbones, which Bekmambetov will be producing alongside Majd Nassif of Bazelevs, ZQ Entertainment partners Keshishian and Petr Jakl, and Martin J Barab. Chaz Rainey is also executive producing.

I’m not familiar with the source material for Carnival of Killers or Sawbones, but the stories sound interesting. I look forward to seeing how these films will turn out.

Source: Deadline

About the Author

Cody is a news editor and film critic, focused on the horror arm of JoBlo.com, and writes scripts for videos that are released through the JoBlo Originals and JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channels. In his spare time, he's a globe-trotting digital nomad, runs a personal blog called Life Between Frames, and writes novels and screenplays.