World War 2 Horror Comic Night And Fog Optioned For A Movie

I'm not sure I'm totally comfortable with a comic book about fantastical monsters from the midst of WW2 being called Night and Fog, the same name as Alain Resnais' shocking, often very hard to swallow documentary about the real atrocities of that war. All the same, that's the name the comic book had and now it's coming to our cinemas, I'm sure it will be the name of the new movie too.

A press release from Studio 407, the comics publishers, has today announced that the producers Gil Adler and Shane McCarthy will be shepherding the Night and Fog adaptation from page to screen. After the break, some quotage from Adler, and a few pages from the first issue of the strip.

So, why did Adler want to take on the project? Here's what he says:

When I read this I knew I had to take it off the market. It's a great high-concept that blends the gothic horror of the Hammer films with the sci-fi horror of Aliens and The Thing ...what really appealed to me wasn't so much the genre trappings, but rather the characters that really drive this story.

..and here's the synopsis:

Tied to an unsolved mystery from World War 2, Night and Fog, tells the story of a Frankenstein like infectious mist unleashed on a military base that transforms its victims into preternatural creatures of the night. But when the survivors try to kill them, they adapt and change into something even more horrific and unstoppable. Caught in between, is a security officer on the base who must escape this gauntlet of horror to save his children before the creatures kill them or the fog infects them.

There's an odd little subgenre of supernatural World War movies in a similar vein, from Michael Mann's The Keep to Michael Basset's Deathwatch. This one distinguishes itself by being set mainly in the present, but the WW2 element is still present and correct. I've not really been satisfied by any of these films so far, though a monster movie strikes me as a sensible approach to dramatizing the horrors of the real situation if handled appropriately.

Below are the opening few pages from the first issue of the comics series. The full chapter can be sampled for free at the official site and according to the press release, which you can read in full at Comic Book Resources, there's a collected trade paperback due in April.

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