There are some projects in Hollywood that race through production like a bat out of hell. A perfect recent example of this is Ridley Scott's The Councilor, which had it's script completed in December and will go before cameras in May with Michael Fassbender attached to star. Others, however, move at the speed of frozen molasses. Take the remake of The Day of the Triffids. All the way back in October 2010 it was announced that Sam Raimi's production company, Ghost House Pictures, had picked up the rights to the original book by John Wyndham. Now, after about 16 months, they've finally found a writer to turn it into a movie.
Ghost House has announced that Neil Cross has been hired to adapt The Day of the Triffids. The project will be the fourth time that the book has been transformed into a visual medium, as it was twice made into a television mini-series (once in 1981 and again in 2009) and Steve Sekely directed a movie version of the story back in 1962. While Cross is fairly new to the feature film game - his only completed credit is 2001's Mr. In-Between - the writer has received much acclaim for creating the series Luther, starring Idris Elba. Cross also recently co-wrote the script for the horror film Mama, which stars Jessica Chastain and was produced by Guillermo del Toro.Triffids is a post-apocalyptic tale about aggressive, intelligent plants that manage to take over the world.
What's interesting is that the press release doesn't mention who will direct the film, though there was a strong implication in the previous report that Raimi would be helming it himself. It's entirely possible that he is planning to, but that a deal just isn't in place yet. Raimi's next film, Oz: The Great and Powerful, will be released almost exactly a year from now on March 8, 2013.
