Mike Flanagan spent years working either from his own ideas, or from books that he felt he could put his distinctive stamp on. (Either through his various Stephen King adaptations, or radically new versions of stories like Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting Of Hill House.) But now that he’s gotten a taste for dabbling in other filmmaker’s playgrounds—courtesy of his soon-to-be-released Exorcist movie, Martyrs, which rolled out its trailer at New York Comic-Con this weekend—Flanagan’s apparently gotten a taste for IP blood.
This is per Flanagan’s own statements, made during a Reddit AMA he did on Friday to simultaneously promote both Exorcist and his Carrie show, which just dropped all its episodes on Prime Video. (There is, after all, a reason it’s taking Flanagan such a long time to get his Dark Tower TV adaptation off the ground, and it’s not because he’s not exceptionally busy pretty much all the time.) When asked the thorny question about what other properties he might like to take an Exorcist-style detour into, though, Flanagan revealed that he’s currently in a bit of a Spielberg mood:
It’s so funny to me because I spent a lot of my career thinking I wouldn’t do franchises or sequels, and—whoops—but I really love getting to play in a world I know and respect and adore, and put my own spin on it. Honestly, I wish to hell I could make a Jaws movie. Another example where no one will EVER get close to the original, but there is a ton of room for improvement on the sequels. A Jurassic movie could be a blast too, I’d want to go really scary with it. A true dinosaur horror film would be a blast.
Jaws is, honestly, a fascinating answer to this question; not unlike The Exorcist, it’s a franchise that’s remained firmly lodged in the public imagination, but which fared so poorly after it moved out of its original creators’ hands that we’ve collectively gotten extremely leering of anyone messing with it anymore. (With the difference being that Hollywood basically gave up on trying after 1987’s Jaws: The Revenge, whereas it’s been plugging away at Exorcist movies at a rate of about one per decade.) Flanagan even floating the idea, meanwhile, has presumably made some apex Hollywood nostalgia predator’s nostrils twitch, and while his idea for a Jurassic movie is probably more feasible—Universal’s been pretty willing to let directors toy with that brand of late, including the more horror-minded Jurassic World: Rebirth last year—seeing the writer-director try to do right by one of the great horror movies is, if nothing else, a pretty profound statement of confidence on Flanagan’s part.
Not that it’s all brands and franchises for the Midnight Mass creator: He also noted that he’s been toying with at least one fully original project, titled Spirit In The Sky, that he said “Might be the thesis of my career. I’d love to do that some day, and if I could do that the way I want to, it might be my ultimate artistic statement.”
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