Jeremy Dyson, best known for his screenwriting work on British TV series The League of Gentlemen, crafted a bona fide scarefest with 2010’s stage show Ghost Stories in tandem with co-writer Andy Nyman. More than half a decade later and Dyson and Nyman are primed to reunite once more, this time to transition the play from the boards to the silver screen.
That’s according to Screen International, revealing that the production has already tapped Sherlock and The Hobbit actor Martin Freeman along with George MacKay. They’ll star opposite Nyman himself, who assumed the role of Professor Phillip Goodman in the original stage show. Described as a “professor of psychology and arch-skeptic,” Goodman is a character that has “rationality tested to the hilt when he receives a letter apparently from beyond the grave.” Very spooky indeed.
What really drives home the fear factor for Nyman’s character is that the letter hails from one Charles Cameron, a former mentor of his that vanished without a trace 15 years prior. Despite reports to the contrary, Cameron is still alive and well, and needs Goodman’s help if he is to crack three seemingly unsolvable cases regarding recent hauntings – cue the spine-chilling Ghost Stories.
Likened to The Woman in Black for its brooding tone, it’s believed that Dyson and Nyman’s big-screen rendition of Ghost Stories will slink before the cameras in September of this year, ahead of a planned release in early 2017. Freeman, meanwhile, has a small role in May’s Captain America: Civil War.