‘The Orphanage’ director J.A. Banyona’s new film, ‘A Monster Calls’, is based on the Youth novel of the same name by Patrick Ness. Ness also penned the screenplay for the film.
The story centers on Conor, a 13-year-old boy coping with his mother’s terminal illness. Conor, waking from the same nightmare he’s been experiencing for months, “the one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming”, at seven minutes after midnight, hears a voice calling to him from outside his bedroom window, which over looks an old church and a graveyard, sheltered by a yew tree. Walking to the window, Conor meets the monster, a towering mass of branches and leaves in a human shape. The monster insists that Conor summoned it and that it will help him by telling him three short stories, in exchange Conor must tell his own story afterwards.
The anthology film will star Liam Neeson, as the voice of the monster. Felicity Jones, Sigourney Weaver, Toby Kebbell, Geraldine Chaplin, Jennifer Lim, Lewis MacDougal and Frida Palsson will also star in the film. ‘A Monster Calls’ is set to premiere in October of 2016.
