Alice Lowe is to tackle Shakespeare and the Girl Guides for her next two films as director. More on them here. Two films in, and Alice Lowe – as a writer-director – has two really good films under her belt. Prevenge was the first, and last year’s Film Stories cover film Timestalker the other. Now ... Alice Lowe sets two new films as writer-director
Alice Lowe is to tackle Shakespeare and the Girl Guides for her next two films as director. More on them here.
Two films in, and Alice Lowe – as a writer-director – has two really good films under her belt. Prevenge was the first, and last year’s Film Stories cover film Timestalker the other. Now we learn that she has two more film projects on the go, that she’s set to write and direct. She’s signed a new deal with Western Edge Pictures as she continues to develop them.
The first is a horror-tinged version of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s going to get a typical Alice Lowe twist, in this case taking a story told a zillion times, but going for the dark undercurrents of the story.
She’s also got a comedy horror, that again will be on the dark side, called Sprites. This is going to be about a girl who joins a Girl Guide pack. Set in the 1980s, as Lowe told Deadline, “I also see it as a transition between the trust in the monarchy, authority, in the church, in religion, in the community and into something more formless and self-centred. Sort of liminal. You only have to look at Jimmy Savile and how he slipped through the cracks to see how there was a perception or culture shift.”
The idea is that she will also take an acting role in both films but, contrary to her first two directorial outings, she’s not going to be the lead this time. No casting or anything has been announced as of yet, nor do we have the timescales for either project. It took her a long time to get Timestalker moving, and such is the path for independent films in the UK that it may take quite a while to get these two to cinemas too.
But! Hopefully not. Alice Lowe has emerged as an important and hugely entertaining voice among UK filmmakers, and if there’s any justice, some of the pots of money swishing around the industry that everyone claims not to have will soon go in her direction.
