Event Horizon TV Show in development at Amazon

Too often we harangue Hollywood when it comes remakes/reboots but once in a while there is a project that is perfect for a reboot, Event Horizon is that film. Directed by Paul W.S Anderson and written by Philip Eisner, it was released in 1997 and was a commerical and critical failure upon its release. It only made $26 million from a budget of $60 million but like many cult films found its audience on DVD, so much so that the studio asked Anderson to put together a direcors cut, unfortunately during this process they found that much of the original footage had not been stored correctly and is was either missing or unusable.

Anderson had made his name with the success of the Mortal Kombat (1995) videogame adaptation and was offered the sequel Annihilation as well, he turned that down as he wanted to make a hard R rated horror film so he could get away from PG13 films, another film he turned down at the time was the original Xmen - imagine how different the superhero landscape could have been if Anderson had directed that one!

This led to Anderson pitching a 'haunted house in space' story with nods to genre classics such as Robert Wises The Haunting (1963) and Stanely Kubricks The Shining (1980) and indeed many fans and critics alike have labelled the film 'The Shining in Space'. The story goes that Anderson only had 6 weeks to edit the film instead of ten and was also 2 weeks behind on filming which led so a very poor rough cut of the film that was still test screened to audiences with a very negative reaction. Anderson agreed that the first was too long but the changes the studio forced on him he believed made the film too short. Ironically the rumour is that test audiences found the film too gory and some fainted and yet fans of the film have celebrated the viseral gore and horror of the film as its strong points.

The plot of the film revolves around a distress signal from the Event Horizon, a starship that disappeared 7 years ago, a rescue vessel 'The Lewis & Clark' is dispatched to the co-ordinates to investigage with your standard horror movie cliche of space crew and also Dr William Weir (Sam Neill) who designed the Event Horizon. Upon discovering the behemoth ship the crew find signs of a massacre onboard while they try and discover what happened to the ship and more importantly the crew.

The Lewis and Clarks crew begin to see apparitions and start to lose their minds in the same way the crew of the Event Horizon did, Captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne) figures out that the ships gravity drive somehow opened up a gateway to a hell dimension and the ship itself has somehow gained an evil sentience. The result of this is most of the crew die horrifically with the ship being split in two and a possessed Dr Weir going on a rampage then two surviors being rescued from stasis 72 days later, with the typically ambiguous horror movie ending of did they escape? are they still on the ship? is Dr Weir still alive? and are they crazy?

Lets face it, Event Horizon is not a great movie and having to shave over 40 minutes of movie away in a few weeks editing and still have the movie make sense is a hard ask. But the reason the film endures is the amazing production design, the ingenius gore and the central idea - what would happen if you send a spaceship to hell?

In August 2019 it was reported that Paramount and Amazon were working on a TV adaptation with esteemed horror director Adam Wingard (You're Next, The Guest & Death Note) onboard to produce and potentially showrun and/or direct.

Literally nothing else is known about the project at the moment which opens up the following for speculation on what the show could be

1.) TV Adaptation of the movie, this would re-tell the events of the movie over 8-10 hours with better acting and more backstory.

2.) Sequel to the film, as two characters survived and half the ship was still intact that could be the launching of point for the show. The surviors wanting to find out what happened to them on the Event Horizon and maybe find out where the ship went and of course they would have to go there themselves to get answers.

3.) A prequel that details the events of the orignial Event Horizon crew and what happened to them, this could then lead up to the start of the original movie.

4.) Or you do a schmozz of all the above featuring the Event Horizon during different time periods pre and post original film.

It is the central tenant of 'hell in space' and 'haunted/possessed spaceships' that make this an idea fully worth exploring further. Imagine a 10 episode season that tells us what orignally happened to the Event Horizon and then on EP 9's cliffhanger we get an episode dealing with what the hell dimension is and what caused the Event Horizon to become sentient and evil? As they say 'take my money!'

Extra Fact 1 -

There is a Screen Rant article about another low budget horror film called 'Dark Side of the Moon' (absolutely no connection to the infinitely more horrific Transformers film!) that had a similar idea and predated Event Horizon by 7 years.

https://screenrant.com/dark-side-moon-movie-event-horizon-hell-space/

Extra Fact 2 - (Don't read if your about to eat)

The original 'blood orgy' sequence where the crew of the Lewis & Clark view footage of what happened to the crew of the Event Horizon was so extreme that much of it was cut with audience memebers fainting. Apparently paraplegic actors were used for the scenes of crew having limbs torn off and porn actors hired to portray the possessed rape scenes. Other scenes people eating their own intestines, a girl getting screws drilled in her teeth and a crew member crawling on the floor while getting their legs broken with steel bars.