Timur Bekmambetov To Create Stan Lee Horror Cinematic Universe
Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted, Night Watch) and his production company Bazelevs are teaming up with ZQ Entertainment to bring Stan Lee’s horror works to the screen. The first two entries in the new cinematic universe will be Sawbones and Carnival of Killers, with Lee’s POW! Entertainment executive producing. Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer will pen the script for Carnival of Killers, while Matt Greenberg will write Sawbones.
Sawbones tells the story of 12-year-old Alex Covin, a boy who is mysteriously transported to another world after reading a comic book. He finds himself in a strange juvenile detention center, where a horrific entity named Sawbones terrorizes his inmates. Carnival of Killers takes place during the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, where a young girl with psychic abilities learns that the traveling circus she and her mother have taken shelter in will soon host an alien invasion.
“There is no other mastermind who has created more successful entertainment than Stan Lee. I’m excited to bring to the screen the darker side of his creative genius and imagination,” Bekmambetov said in a statement to Deadline.
“Some fans may not know this, but Stan Lee wrote several horror comic book series in the 1940s and 1950s before superhero comics became big in the 1960s,” said POW! Entertainment president Gill Champion. “Stan relished revisiting the genre a few years ago when he wrote these stories, and we are excited to bring them to life with a director as visionary as Timur Bekmambetov. We think fans will be surprised to experience a darker side of Stan Lee that they’ve never witnessed before!”