The script, which has a fun premise, has been a passion project for U.S. scribe Birke since he was a student and he has returned to it multiple times. The project now has fresh impetus with SBS Productions and SBS International, which is repping sales at the Cannes market. The team is aiming to shoot this fall in Latvia.
Set in 1943, the story begins “with a group of refugees, fleeing Vichy France, who attempt a desperate crossing of the Channel, only to wind up stranded on a supposedly deserted island. The island turns out to be home to an undying supernatural evil. The curse of undeath takes each of the fugitives, one by one, until only one is left alive and still human. She must now adapt to surviving at the margins of the strange, violent and perverse community formed by her former friends. Watch on Deadline Related Stories Festivals Greece Set As Country of Honor At Cannes Marché Du Film News Yeon Sang-ho's Cannes Midnight Title 'Colony' Passes 3 Million Admissions On Korean Release
Birke explained today: “I became fascinated with vampires of the female variety at a very young age. One of my earliest memories is of a recurring nightmare that only later in life did I discover was a scene from the Hammer-Christopher Lee version of Dracula, specifically the scene where Lucy tenderly threatens to feed on a child. From the time I started writing stories of my own, I wanted to write a vampire story that would capture that fairy tale mixture of menace and the eerie enchantment that haunted my earliest dreams.
Source: deadline.com