Ghost Stories directors Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman have spoken about the challenges of bringing their hit horror play to the screen.
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Remaining as funny and scary as the play, the movie premiered last night (October 5) at the BFI London Film Festival, with the directors highlighting the biggest change between the two versions during a post-screening Q&A.
"It would have been much easier to write an original screenplay. We had to take it through several stages and the first stage was letting go of the theatre show because it was so deeply ground into our heads," The League of Gentlemen's Dyson explained.
The main thing they had to consider was how to adapt the play's lecture-based structure for a movie, allowing them to still tell the three chilling unsolved cases that haunted professional sceptic Phillip Goodman.
"There are twists within the play that we haven't brought over to the film and vice-versa, some of the stuff in the film isn't in the play," Nyman added.
(Ghost Stories play)
"One of the big devices in the play is that the whole thing is presented as a lecture that Goodman is giving. The first thing was trying to find Goodman's journey, that became one of the biggest things to unlock."
The result was that the movie sees Goodman (played by Nyman) actually given the cases by a former parapsychologist and his idol, but we won't dare spoil any more of the fiendish surprises up its sleeve.
Ghost Stories also stars Sherlock's Martin Freeman, Paul Whitehouse and Black Mirror's Alex Lawther. A UK release date is to be confirmed.
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Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
