A carnival is coming to town. An event which usually heralds joy and happiness brings instead terror and tragedy. The citizens of Green Town have discovered that Something Wicked This Way Comes. A nightmarish masterpiece, adapted by Ray Bradbury from his own novel, Something Wicked is being released as a major motion picture by Walt Disney Productions.
The $16 million dollar project stars the highly acclaimed, two-time Oscar winner Jason (Julia, Melvin and Howard) Robards as mild-mannered town librarian Charles Halloway, who alone summons the inner strength necessary to defeat the evil carnival and its sinister ringmaster. Tony Award-winner Jonathan (The Comedians) Pryce makes his American film debut as the devilish ringmaster, Mr. Dark. His evil accomplice is Pam (Fort Apache, The Bronx) Grier as the hauntingly beautiful Dust Witch.
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A Dream Come of Age
Author Ray Bradbury has paid a price in realizing a 23-year old dream, which began as the short story "Black Ferris," first published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in May 1948. Ten years later, actor/filmmaker Gene Kelly requested that Bradbury view his Invitation to Dance. Inspired by Kelly's direction and desire to work with him, Bradbury wrote a screenplay, entitled Dark Carnival, and personally delivered the script to Kelly's house. Although Kelly was enthusiastic about directing it, he was unable to develop sufficient financing for the project and it was shelved.
Bradbury transformed the screenplay into the novel Something Wicked This Way Comes, which was published in 1962. The book has since sold more than 18 million copies in paperback. Interest in producing the film version continued, involving directors Sam (The Wild Bunch) Peckinpah, Mark (On Golden Pond) Rydell, and Steven Spielberg. It wasn't until a purely chance meeting between Bradbury and Peter Vincent Douglas, son of actor Kirk Douglas, at a bookstore in 1975 that things really fell into place. Douglas learned that the rights to Something Wicked were available and he immediately acquired them. His initial meetings with director Jack (The Great Gatsby) Clayton were promising. Walt Disney Productions was approached, the response was favorable and the packaging of the project was coming together. The Douglas family has a long-time interest in Bradbury's stories, dating back to Kirk Douglas' involvement with a proposed but unrealized 1950s teleseries of The Martian Chronicles (two decades later, that book did spawn an NBC mini-series).
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