Boneshaker: Steampunk swashbuckler gets movie treatment

Started by Jake, December 03, 2011, 04:15:10 PM

Previous topic - Next topic
Hammer Films has acquired the movie rights for Cherie Priest's steampunk novel Boneshaker. The film will be co-produced with Cross Creek Pictures (Black Swan). Hammer Films said: "First and foremost this is a great story.  Bringing a steampunk style novel to life on the big screen is going to be very cool, very unique." CEO Simon Oakes said: "Boneshaker is a classic zombie movie with a modern twist which is quintessentially Hammer so it's a perfect fit for us. Cherie Priest's steampunk series are fantastic with a distinct, unique style and we're really looking forward to bringing her 'Rotters' to the big screen."

"It's like Jules Verne meets Resident Evil, and we're thrilled to have such a fun, commercial potential franchise in Boneshaker," said Cross Creek's Brian Oliver.

Winner of the 2010 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, Boneshaker is set in an alternate version of 1880s Seattle and follows a family whose three generations unmade and remade the city through a series of scientific and martial adventures. In the early days of the American Civil War, rumours of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska's ice. Thus was Dr. Blue's Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born. But on its first test run the Boneshaker went terribly awry, destroying several blocks of downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas that turned anyone who breathed it into the living dead...