The New Film Adaptation of SLEEPY HOLLOW Will Explore Parts of The Book We Haven't Seen in Movies Before

Washington Irving's classic story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is getting a new film adaptation from Pet Sematary: Bloodlines director Lindsey Anderson Beer, and in a recent interview, she offers an update on the project and what she’s going for.

While talking to Collider, Beer explained: "Sleepy Hollow ... There are a lot of skill sets that are similar in terms of its beloved IP. It's also the same kind of thing where when I was doing Bloodlines, I kept asking myself when I was doing the rewrites, 'What would I want to know as a Pet Sematary fan? What are the questions left unanswered from the book? And what are the parts of the book that haven't been explored in movies?'"

She continued: "For instance, the end of [Pet Sematary] says that Jud is the guardian of the woods, and the book says that Jud's experience with Timmy Baterman is the reason that the evil is even targeting him as an old man, that we know ... There are so many things like that that aren't explored in films, and that a lot of the fans don't know because they haven't read the book, or haven't read the book for so much time."

It will be interesting to see what elements of the story she is going to focus on, and what she will do to make this different from the adaptations that have come before. I love this story and we’ve seen several iterations of it over the years. My two favorites are the classic 1949 Disney animated The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Tim Burton’s 1999 movie, which starred Johnny Depp. I just watched that movie again the other night, and it’s so good!

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is set in the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town, New York, in a secluded glen known as Sleepy Hollow, it tells the tale of Ichabod Crane, a lanky and superstitious schoolmaster from Connecticut. Ichabod competes with the town's strongman, Brom Bones, for the hand of Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter of a wealthy farmer.

The story is renowned for its climax, in which Ichabod encounters what he believes to be the ghost of a headless Hessian trooper, said to be searching for his missing head. This apparition, the Headless Horseman, chases Ichabod through the woods, ultimately leading to the schoolmaster's mysterious disappearance. The tale concludes with hints that the ghostly figure was in fact Brom Bones playing a trick on Crane to scare him away from Sleepy Hollow and Katrina.

Anderson Beer added, "The legends of Sleepy Hollow are so rich, and as I started doing the research about the Hudson Valley and true ghost stories, I just, I got addicted to that, too."

I hope this movie ends up being good!