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Matt Reeves to Write & Direct '8 O'Clock in the Morning' Adaptation

by Ethan Anderton
April 11, 2011
Source: Deadline

His remake of Let the Right One In made my list for the Ten Best Films from 2010, and now it sounds like writer/director Matthew Reeves has his next project lined up. Deadline reports the Cloverfield and Let Me In helmer is set to adapt Ray Nelson's short story 8 O'Clock in the Morning into a feature film. The story follows a man who awakes from his sleep to realize that society is under a hypnotic state controlled by aliens who merely want the human race as a source of food. If that sounds familiar, it's because the story was acquired as the basis for John Carpenter's 1988 flicks They Live where aliens were seen with sunglasses.

However, the film is not considered a remake of Carpeneter's film, but rather a whole new take on the original short story. Ironically enough, Nelson was a good friend of author Philip K. Dick, the late author whose short stories turned into films like Minority Report and Total Recall. Here's what Reeves had to say about his project:

"I saw an opportunity to do a movie that was very point-of-view driven, a psychological science fiction thriller that explores this guy's nightmare. There could be a desperate love story at the center of this. Carpenter took a satirical view of the material and the larger political implication that we're being controlled. I am very drawn to the emotional side, the nightmare experience with the paranoia of 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' or a Roman Polanski-style film."

A script is not completed yet, but Reeves is supposed to begin writing the adaptation immediately. It certainly sounds like another intriguing project for the director who has made a splash with Cloverfield and Let Me In. As a filmmaker, Reeves has the great ability to take a genre concept/story and inject it with some real humanity and heart. I know some people were naysayer's about his remake of the aforementioned coming-of-age vampire tale, but Reeves delivered a great take on the story and made it more familiar to American audiences without being disrespectful of the original story. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what he can do with this new project. How about you?

Filed under Development, Movie News

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