The film will be produced by Elijah Wood's production banner Spectrevision, along with partners Daniel Noah and Josh C. Waller. Zodiac Features will be funding and co-producing. This will be their first venture as a company.
The screenplay was written by Brandon Maurice Williams, who grew up in the projects of Pittsburgh and was mentored by writer/director Oren Moverman during the production of Rampart back in 2011. He met Spectrevision partner Daniel Noah at that time and shares this screenplay with him.Curse the Darkness is what the trio refer to as an "anthropological zombie film," building on the real-world history of chemically-induced slavery widely practiced by plantation owners around the Haitian Revolution of 1803. Set against the modern day backdrop of undocumented workers laboring in the Louisiana sugarcane fields, the story is a terrifying look at the systematic exploitation of the labor force by large corporate entities, as well as a portrait of the plight of undocumented workers in the United States.
Says Elijah Wood of the project, "We always said we wanted to stay away from the zombie genre, as it's been so well covered, but when we read Brandon's script, we encountered a take on the genre that simply had to be realized. Curse the Darkness is both a chilling exercise in horror and an incisive polemic against the conditions of illegal immigrants in this country."
Production is set to begin at the end of October. Casting is currently underway.