Richard Stanley Is Directing Nicolas Cage In An H.P. Lovecraft Adaptation

The last time the good folks over at SpectreVision teamed up with Nicolas Cage, we ended up with Panos Cosmatos' Mandy, a mind-melting, psychedelic horror-thriller. 

So, when you hear that SpectreVision and Cage are keeping their little love fest going, it's exciting. When you hear they're making an H.P. Lovecraft adaptation together, it's even better. But when you hear they've hired Richard fucking Stanley to direct said adaptation? Good lord. The Birth.Movies.Death. crew is currently swinging from the rafters, screaming obscenities and shooting Roman candles at one another in celebration. 

Here's the news: Cage will star in Stanley's The Colour Out of Space, based on the H.P. Lovecraft short story of the same name. Lovecraft's original tale revolves around a man investigating a supposedly cursed area outside Arkham, MA, where a fallen meteor has turned a stretch of the landscape into a bizarro wasteland where plants grow abnormally large, animals become freakish, dangerous mutants and people go insane. Stanley wrote the adaptation, which will apparently tweak the source material in a few relatively minor ways.

Richard Stanley, of course, is the absolute madman behind Hardware, Dust Devil and ... well, in 1996 he came very close to directing The Island of Dr. Moreau for New Line Cinema, but was unceremoniously removed from the production just days into filming when pretty much everything you can imagine going wrong on a film set, went wrong (that whole escapade, only some of which actually seems to have been Stanley's fault, is chronicled in the 2014 documentary Lost Soul, and I strongly advise every one of you to seek it out; it is bananas).

Needless to say, pairing Stanley and Cage with H.P. Lovecraft is sure to yield interesting results. Stanley's clearly been itching to get back in the game for some time, and this material is right up his alley (just imagine what he'll do with those oversized, mutated animals). Cage, meanwhile, is coming off the one-two-three punch of Mom and Dad, Mandy and the absolutely insane Between Worlds; our man is in the zone like he hasn't been in years! 

Needless to say, we cannot wait to see how this one turns out, and will be keeping our ears very close to the ground for further updates. Stay tuned.