Well, this should be interesting. Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss might already have a $200 million Netflix deal, but now they’ve added another project to their roster: a film adaptation of Hans Rodionoff’s graphic novel, Lovecraft, which explores the twisted mind of the horror writer throughout his life. But Lovecraft was also a known racist and anti-Semite, and not everyone is convinced that Benioff and Weiss are necessarily the best people to handle his story.
It’s somewhat surprising that Benioff and Weiss even have time to take this project on; the two ditched a planned Star Wars trilogy earlier this year, in part because their Netflix deal will keep them busy. (“Toxic fandom” reportedly also played a role in that decision.) Nonetheless, Deadline reports that the two have set the film with Warner Bros., and that the project will ask “a horrifying question: what if H.P. Lovecraft wasn’t making it up? What if the monsters he created are real?” The film, the trade adds, will take place in 1920 “within the Cthulhu mythos.” Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi, who penned Aeon Flux, Ride Along, The Invitation, and Destroyer, will write the film’s script, with The Invitation and Destroyer director Karyn Kusama set as an executive producer. Benioff and Weiss will produce, but whether or not they will direct remains unknown.
What is known, however, is that Lovecraft, for all his pop-culture influence, was also terribly racist. His letters and literary work overflow with these sentiments, and in some cases it’s not even subtext. In 1912 he penned a poem titled “On the Creation of N-----s,” in which, as Wes House explained in a thorough exploration of Lovecraft’s white supremacy for Lit Hub, Gods create black people as a semi-human species somewhere between man and beasts.
Benioff and Weiss, no strangers to online controversy, are seeing some of the same pushback that happened when they first announced the now-defunct series Confederate for HBO: namely, why this story, and why them?
Lovecraft’s influence has become a particularly thorny subject in recent years, as debate rages on regarding how to process his racism alongside his literary legacy. In 2015 the World Fantasy Awards even announced that they would cease their practice of handing out statuettes in his likeness as trophies. Still, a year later, the author became the basis for an animated children’s movie.
This new Warner Bros. film will have a difficult mission: Any exploration of Lovecraft’s mind would, one might think, have to address all of the bigotry inside it. After facing years of criticism for the way Game of Thrones handled race, Benioff and Weiss should at least be prepared for much more of the same scrutiny.
This post has been updated.
— Why Baby Yoda has conquered the world
— Scarlett Johansson on movies, marriage, and controversies
— 2020 Oscar nominations: 20 movies that are serious contenders
— 29 of the brightest stars who died
— The decade’s best shows, episodes, and where to stream our favorites
— V.F.’s chief critic looks back at the films that helped define the year in cinema
— From the Archive: Julia Roberts—Hollywood’s Cinderella and the belle of the box office
Looking for more? Sign up for our daily Hollywood newsletter and never miss a story.
