Sumith Prasad
Director Eli Craig’s teen horror film ‘Clown in a Cornfield’ will commence production in Winnipeg, Canada, from 18th September to 7th November 2023. The young adult slasher is about Quinn Maybrook, who moves to the decaying town of Kettle Springs, Missouri after its corn syrup factory closes down. Here she finds that the former town mascot, the clown Frendo, has more sinister plans for everyone involved.
The production team has yet to finalize the casting for the roles of the three teenagers in the small Midwestern town – the newcomer Quinn Maybrook, the privileged kid on the block Cole Hill, and Rust Vance, a rural outcast living in the shadows. The movie is based in Missouri, USA, but the filming will be done in Winnipeg, one of the largest cities in Canada, and the subplot of the movie on failed agricultural production can be well displayed by the plains here. The local film production company, Thundersnow, as well as the casting director Jim Heber, have joined the project.
The horror flick is adapted from the eponymous 2020 novel by the Bram Stoker Award-winning author, Adam Cesare, and written for the screen by Carter Blanchard (‘Good vs Evil’). The book’s synopsis brings out the sinister mood of the plot: “Kettle Springs is caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress. It’s a fight that looks like it will destroy the town.”
Cesare’s bestselling novel is in good hands as Craig is a seasoned horror-comedy director, known for ‘Little Evil’ and ‘Zombieland,’ along with the Temple Hill production house, known for the Netflix smash hit ‘Smile’ and franchises such as ‘Twilight’ and ‘The Maze Runner’ series. In a statement, Temple Hill’s Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey said, “We love Eli Craig’s brand of scary fun and are thrilled to be working with him on this terrifying slasher adaptation that is both timely and timeless.”
The book ‘Clown in a Cornfield’ is the first in the series, whose second part is called ‘Frendo Lives’ (2022), and Cesare has announced a third book in the series as well. We all know what that means – fans can welcome a trilogy in the making! For horror aficionados, Cesare also has a Youtube review show, ‘Project: Black T-shirt,’ where he pairs horror movies with novels.
