HAUNTING SKIES is Bringing Its Wild Aliens vs. the Devil Horror Story to the Big Screen
What happens when alien invaders conquer Earth, start abducting the survivors, and accidentally pick up a young girl possessed by Satan? They may have just made the worst possible choice.
The indie horror novel Haunting Skies is officially being developed as a film, with Christian Kang Bachini, the author and filmmaker who created the story, set to direct the adaptation through Via Mantra Productions.
We previously shared details on Haunting Skies and its wonderfully insane horror premise, and it's cool to see Bachini already moving forward with plans to bring his alien apocalypse to the screen. He's also the filmmaker behind the insane horror short Escalation, which we previously featured as well.
Haunting Skies takes place after aliens have already conquered Earth. The surviving humans are being abducted and subjected to horrific experiments, but the extraterrestrials eventually grab someone they really should have left alone.
The official logline reads: “Haunting Skies imagines an Earth already conquered by alien invaders, who abduct the remaining survivors for grotesque experiments.
“Their mistake is taking Elisa, a young girl possessed by Satan. Father Kang, the last surviving exorcist, devises a plan to get her aboard the alien mothership and make a deal with the Devil to turn Hell against the invaders.”
Aliens versus the forces of Hell is exactly the kind of ridiculous horror collision that gets my attention. The idea of humanity's last exorcist intentionally sending a Satan-possessed girl onto an alien mothership as part of a plan to save Earth sounds like it could make for one hell of a horror movie.
Natasha Halevi, whose credits include Superman and Peacemaker, and Emily Ashby of Teela and the Masters of the Universe are set to star.
The project has also landed Christopher Young to compose the score. That's a great choice for this kind of movie considering Young's horror résumé includes Hellraiser, Sinister, and Drag Me to Hell. Heather Brittain will produce.
Rather than immediately jumping into a feature-length production, the team will begin with a 30-minute proof of concept for Haunting Skies. That approach gives Bachini a chance to establish the movie's world, atmosphere, creatures, and horror before expanding it into the full film.
Bachini independently published Haunting Skies in July after initially working with literary agents on rewrites. According to the filmmaker, those changes eventually began pulling the book away from the story he originally wanted to tell, so he chose to release it himself instead.
He explained: “I had already rewritten it several times,” he said. “At a certain point, I realized I wasn’t improving the story anymore — I was negotiating away the reasons I had created it. So I said no and published it myself.”
That decision appears to have found an audience. Haunting Skies has since charted among Amazon's top occult and supernatural horror bestsellers, and Bachini isn't stopping with the first novel. A sequel is already planned for October.
He's carrying that independent mindset into the film adaptation as well. Bachini intends to maintain control of the property and avoid the kind of creative notes that could soften or reshape the stranger elements that make Haunting Skies stand out in the first place.
Bachini said: “The novel is not merchandise for a movie that doesn’t exist yet,” Bachini said. “It is the first complete version of the universe. Readers can enter it now — and instead of waiting for someone else to decide whether the film should exist, their response can help us make it our way.”
There's something appealing about seeing a filmmaker build an audience around the story first and then use that momentum to make the movie on his own terms.
It's especially interesting with a concept like Haunting Skies, because "aliens accidentally abduct a girl possessed by Satan and Hell goes to war with the invaders" isn't exactly the kind of premise that needs to be sanded down. The craziness is the point.
With Bachini directing, Halevi and Ashby starring, and Young providing the music, Haunting Skies has the ingredients for a seriously fun piece of sci-fi horror.
Source: Variety