‘The Boy’ & ‘The Devil Inside’ Director William Brent Bell Lines Up Folk-Horror ‘Lord Of Misrule’ With ‘The Quiet Ones’ Scribe, Bankside Launches At EFM

EXCLUSIVE: The Boy and The Devil Inside filmmaker William Brent Bell is set to direct contemporary folk-horror Lord Of Misrule, which Bankside is launching world sales on at the EFM.

Set in a small town in the English countryside, the film will follow a desperate search for the young daughter of the town’s new minister. The girl goes missing during a Solstice Festival. The closer the locals and police get towards finding the girl, the more secrets from the town’s past emerge.

Tom de Ville (The Quiet Ones) has scripted the commercially-minded genre project, whose plot, on paper, has echoes of The Wicker Man. Casting is underway with shoot planned for summer 2020.

Producers are Laurie Cook and Jason Newmark and The Machine Room’s William Brent Bell and James Tomlinson. Executive producers are Richard Mansell, Ed Fraiman and Adam Nagel. The film will be a Bigscope Films and The Machine Room production and was developed with the support of the BFI.

Bell has an enviable track record when it comes to genre box office breakouts. The Boy took $74M off an estimated $10M budget in 2016 while low-budget horror The Devil Inside took more than $100M global. Upcoming he has Brahms: The Boy II, which is slated to be released February 21 by STX. He is also in the final stages of post-production on Separation, the Brooklyn-set supernatural thriller starring Rupert Friend and Brian Cox.

Bankside’s Stephen Kelliher said of the project, “William Brent Bell’s track record in the elevated genre space is second to none and we could not be more excited to embark on Lord Of Misrule in his highly accomplished hands.”

Bell is represented by ICM Partners and Jackoway Austen Tyerman Wertheimer Mandelbaum Morris Bernstein Trattner and Klein. Tomlinson is repped by attorney Glenn Feig at Reder and Feig.