The Sons Of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter’s planned dark historical drama will mark his feature directorial debut.
There’s no shortage of fans out there of Kurt Sutter’s work on the small screen, following his acclaimed projects such as Sons Of Anarchy and The Bastard Executioner. Sutter excels at telling gutsy, instinctual stories laced with operatic themes. Sons Of Anarchy's retelling of Shakepeare’s Hamlet through the travails of a Californian biker gang being an excellent example.
Now, Blumhouse and Netflix are giving the creator the chance to embellish his signature style on film, as he looks to make his feature film directorial debut with This Beast, a historical drama that he has also written and will produce.
The story focuses on ‘an 18th century English village being besieged by a mysterious and elusive beast. Dozens of innocents are slaughtered and the mayhem is driven to puritanical heights by religious fanaticism. The impossible task of killing the beast falls to a lowly trapper who promises he can stop the carnage. But for him this hunt is not a professional mission, it’s a deeply personal one. The idea was inspired by The Beast of Gévaudan, a true story about a mysterious beast that terrorised a French village in the 1760s.’
Sutter himself is naturally excited about the project, stating “bringing my disturbing, familial story sensibility into the Blumhouse world just seemed like something that had to happen. And This Beast is the perfect project for that marriage. And Netflix is the perfect venue for that bloody ceremony.”
Sutter’s only previous film work was on the excellent boxing drama, Southpaw, which he scripted.
The combination of Netflix and Blumhouse, who both trust their filmmakers to express themselves, seems like a good fit for a storyteller with a distinctive voice like Sutter, so this announcement is a promising one indeed.
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