Good news: Hammer Films is making a new monster movie: Ithaqua. Not-so-good news: it appears to have used AI to generate the poster.
Update 14th February 2025: Hammer Films has since issued an official response to the story below. It’s quite lengthy, so we’ve published it in a separate news piece.
Our original story follows…
12th February 2025: Hammer Films, arguably the biggest name in British genre filmmaking, is busy making a new horror feature – its first since 2023’s Doctor Jekyll. Called Ithaqua, it’s a period piece with a solid cast including Luke Hemsworth and Kevin Durand.
Shooting is currently underway in Canada, with the iconic studio releasing a number of behind-the-scenes images from the production on its Instagram feed.
Rather disappointingly, however, a separate post includes a teaser poster which bears all the hallmarks of being generated using a piece of AI software like Midjourney. We’ve contacted Hammer Films to find out whether or not it is indeed AI-generated and will update this post if and when we get a response. (Edit: a response has since been issued.)
While looking around for information about Ithaqua, meanwhile, we found what appears to be an earlier poster for the same film on its IMDb page. It’s strikingly similar in composition, but looks more like the work of a flesh-and-blood artist. Here they are for comparison, with the Instagram poster on the left and the IMDb version on the right:
As for the film itself, it stars Luke Hemsworth, Kevin Durand, Craig Lauzon and Michael Pitt and is co-written, directed and produced by Casey Walker. If the synopsis is anything to go by, it sounds like we’re in for something harsh and gritty, like The Revenant but with a supernatural creature in the place of a hungry bear. Here’s the official description:
Set in the brutal wilderness of 1800s Canada, the fur trade is in decline and a remote outpost is starving. A mercenary fights to unite the survivors against the cold, the hunger… and something far worse. A dark force is watching. Waiting. And those who fall into its grasp are cursed with an insatiable hunger for flesh.
For the uninitiated, the film’s title has quite a lineage to it. Its original name was the Wendigo – a gigantic creature from Native American mythology. British writer Algernon Blackwood based one of his most famous stories – simply called The Wendigo – on the legend, first published in 1910.
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That story in turn inspired American fiction writer August Derleth, best known these days for expanding HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos with his own brand of weird tales. In Derleth’s telling, the Ithaqua is a relative of the fleet-footed and smelly Wendigo, and likes nothing more than to prowl icy wastes in search of human victims to eat. More than a mere monster, though, Derleth cast the Ithaqua as a Great Old One – evil beings who’ve been around for millions of years.
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It’s currently unclear whether Hammer Films’ Ithaqua will take inspiration from Derleth’s stories, Blackwood’s earlier tale, or is simply drawing on an atmospheric-sounding name.
Hammer’s Insta feed suggests we’re in for something in the studio’s gory tradition, with one image showing a pile of gruesome looking props: severed heads, limbs and what appear to be the bloodied skeletal remains of animals.
“Filming of Ithaqua is underway in the icy wilderness of Canada, where temperatures are plunging to -30°C,” the studio writes in a post. “The cold is brutal. The conditions are unforgiving. And deep in the snow-covered darkness, something terrifying is waiting… This is horror at its most chilling, quite literally.”
It’s pleasing to see a film production using real locations and practical effects. It’s a pity about that poster, though.
We’ll bring you more on Ithaqua – including a response from Hammer, if we get one – in due course.
