Joseph Delaney, English fantasy author, had the first book in the Spooks series (or in America The Wardstone Chronicles) published in 2004 and has since then wrote twelve books in the series, with book thirteen coming December this year. A new film adaptation of The Spook’s Apprentice is in post-production and will be released later this year title Seventh Son. It’s under the direction of Russian Sergei Bodrov and stars Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart, Tron, The Big Lebowski, True Grit), Ben Barnes (Chronicles of Narnia), Julianne Moore (The Kids Are All Right) and Alicia Vikander (A Royal Affair).
It tells the story of a wizard, known in this world as a Spook, called John Gregory. As the long gone Mother Malkin returns, Gregory recruits the young Tom Ward to become a better Spook than himself with one rule: when you see a witch, kill it. Tom’s allegiances are torn when he falls for Alice (a witch who claims to be good).
The new trailer for Seventh Son showed more darkness and great special effects than I expected. The dark warriors, dragons and deserted landscapes looked surprisingly realistic and provided a different tone to what we’ve seen of recent fantasy movies (which usually take after a more Game of Thronesey Scandinavian feel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyZAooQBDrY
The other trailer released was for Saving Mr Banks. Disney are making a film featuring their own founder Walt Disney who is played now by Tom Hanks. Emma Thomas plays the English author P.L Travers who, after experiencing international success, flies to Los Angeles to visit Walt and discuss with him the arrangements for the film adaptation of her beloved book Mary Poppins, which she is adamantly against.
Mr Banks is of coarse the father character who’s children are looked after by nanny Mary Poppins, whose magic umbrellas and musical numbers are misunderstood for what Travers really intended with her book. In the film, Travers remembers and tells, in detail, to Walt Disney her Australian childhood and the real-life inspirations for the characters: herself being one of the children, her father being Mr Banks and of coarse their nanny.
It looks like it’s going to be Disney writing a love letter to it’s founder Walt and we can expect to see Tom Hanks having fun with a show stealing role. It also looks to be much funnier and full of in-jokes than I had thought previously (with songwriters subtly hiding Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Although it looks similar in structure to Finding Neverland, it’ll most certainly be a very original and eccentric piece that also stars Paul Giamatti and Colin Ferrel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5kYmrjongg
Seventh Son is out 25th October
Saving Mr Banks is out 17th January 2014
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