Hitting Screens, Week of Feb. 20, 2017
It’s a light week for adaptations in theaters, as the movie business focuses on Sunday’s Academy Awards.
The Girl With All the Gifts, a zombie horror film based on M. R. Carey’s novel of the same title, opens in theaters and on VOD on Friday, after having already aired on DirecTV.
The film stars Sennia Nanua, Gemma Arterton, Dominique Tipper, and Glenn Close. It is directed by Colm McCarthy (Sherlock, Doctor Who).
Reviews are widely mixed.
The Hollywood Reporter was not impressed, writing it is “rather dreary … A runaway success like 28 Days Later or The Walking Dead, this is not.” Variety agrees, writing it is “A tired attempt to board the zombie bandwagon.”
However, The Guardian was enthusiastic, saying it is a “fiercely intelligent British chiller … [that] breathes new life into age-old horror tropes, taking familiar fears of zombies, the apocalypse and eerie children and spinning them in surprising ways.”
io9 goes further, saying it “Has Joined the Horde of All-Time Great Zombie Films … It’s the rare zombie film that innovates the genre with skill and excitement.”
There is no tie-in but the timing is good for Carey. He is writing a prequel, The Boy on the Bridge (Hachette/Orbit), due out May 2.
It’s deja vu all over again for Tulip Fever, which was scheduled to open this weekend. Based on the historical novel by Deborah Moggach, it was suddenly pulled from its original July 2016 opening. Now, just days before it was to open on its new date, it has been postponed yet again, this time to an unspecified date [UPDATE: It has now been rescheduled to August 25, 2017].
The Playlist says it was “at one time perceived as a big-ticket project. But somewhere along the way, it seems it was a promise that couldn’t be lived up to … Tulip Fever is starting to smell like another recent star-studded Weinstein picture that mostly flamed out: last year’s restaurant drama Burnt.”
For those getting the feeling that the film will never air, IndieWire notes the studio “has a history with these kind of recurring delays. Most recently, the company also moved the release date back twice for The Founder, the Michael Keaton-starring McDonald’s origin story … The decision to push Tulip Fever comes after a tough year for virtually all independent distributors in the theatrical marketplace.”
There is no official tie-in. Moggach has had success with adaptations of her novels before. She wrote The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.