365 Days of Trailers Day 22

Day number 22 brings you Jack Clayton's 1983 film Something Wicked This Way Comes, based on the book of the same name by Ray Bradbury.

In a small town, two young boys named Will and Jim encounter a sinister carnival whose proprietor, Mr. Dark, lures the townsfolk to their doom by promising to fulfill their childhood desires. As Will, Jim, and Will's father, Charles Halloway, are about to find out, these wishes come at a horrific price. Will they survive? - IMDB


In 1977, Bradbury sold the film rights to Something Wicked This Way Comes to Paramount. He and director Jack Clayton, whom Bradbury had previously worked with on Moby Dick, produced a completed script. However, production never began and the film was eventually put into turnaround.

At this time Walt Disney Pictures was concentrating on films with more mature themes in an attempt to break free from their stereotype as an animation and family film studio. After the success of family-oriented fantasy pictures by competing studios, such as Time Bandits and The Dark Crystal, Disney decided to purchase the adaptation's rights and hired Bradbury to produce a new script from scratch.

The studio sought Bradbury's input on selecting a cast and director, and he suggested Clayton feeling they had worked well together at Paramount. In a 1981 issue of Cinefantastique, Bradbury stated that his top choices to play Mr. Dark were Peter O'Toole and Christopher Lee. However, Disney decided to go with a relatively unknown actor instead in order to keep the budget down. As the film progressed, two differing visions emerged for the film, with Bradbury wishing to stay as faithful to the novel as possible, and Clayton wanting to make a more accessible and family friendly film. The two became estranged when Clayton hired writer John Mortimer to do an uncredited revision of Bradbury's screenplay at the studio's behest.

Initial test screenings did not fare well with audiences, and Disney re-commissioned Bradbury to write an opening narration sequence and new ending. Disney also spent an additional $5 million on refilming, re-editing, and rescoring the picture.

Something Wicked has a strange mystique about it that I have always loved. Hope you enjoy!



IMDB Page:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086336/
Jack Clayton IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002338/
WIKI on Ray Bradbury: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Bradbury