Drew Goddard is no stranger to the horror genre: it’s practically the writer-director’s entire career. He started out writing episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off Angel, before moving on to writing Cloverfield and eventually co-writing and directing Cabin in the Woods (arguably the film that best encapsulates what makes the horror genre work). So it seems a bit surprising that his next project isn’t horror-based at all, but rather science fiction. The project is called The Martian and it is based on an e-book about an astronaut that is trapped on Mars. An excerpt from the book provides a glimpse of what to potentially expect from the film tonally:
“Six days into what should be the greatest two months of my life, and it’s turned into a nightmare. I don’t even know who’ll read this. I guess someone will find it eventually. Maybe 100 years from now. For the record… I didn’t die on Sol 6. Certainly the rest of the crew thought I did, and I can’t blame them. Maybe there’ll be a day of national mourning for me, and my Wikipedia page will say “Mark Watney is the only human being to have died on Mars.” And it’ll be right, probably. Cause I’ll surely die here. Just not on Sol 6 when everyone thinks I did. Let’s see…where do I begin?”
What is most interesting about the excerpt is that the book (and by extension the film) seems to have more of a survivalist mindset than a horror one. Goddard looks to be going to into very new territory for his sophomore directorial effort, and I am curious how much of a resemblance it will have to his previous works.
Recent Comments