A couple weeks ago I mentioned that Scott Derrickson is working on a film adaptation of John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost. Now he’s adapting another story with that title — sort of.
ComingSoon.net reports that Derrickson and co-writer Paul Harris Boardman are now adapting Mara Leveritt‘s book Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three, which concerns the real-life murder of three boys and the imprisonment of three teenagers who were accused of the crime based on pretty flimsy evidence — a story that was previously told in the documentary Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996), which I saw on the big screen way back in my student-newspaper days, and its sequel Paradise Lost 2: Revelations (2000), which I have not yet seen.
Between this and The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), it seems Derrickson has a thing for stories about controversial real-life court cases — especially those with an alleged occultic element!
And as if these two films weren’t enough, the IMDB says Derrickson is also attached to the sci-fi film Countdown, based on a short story by Richard Matheson (author of the stories that inspired The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Omega Man, What Dreams May Come, etc.)! Quite a full plate, he has.
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