The Wicker Man Reborn as a Series
(Images: IMdB/Imaginarium Productions/Urban Myth Films)
The Wickerman, the blazing forefather of folk horror, celebrating the 50th anniversary of its creation and incineration this year, is hopefully going to be revived into a TV series!
“A bold, shocking and unique series, pulling the themes and terrifying power of the original Wicker Man into a thrilling modern setting.”
According to Deadline, the production companies involved are The Imaginarium (founded by Andy Serkis and Jonathon Cavendish) and Urban Myth Films (backed by Studio Canal) who have acquired the rights to a script by Howard Overman (the BAFTA-winning writer of Misfits, Dirk Gently and Atlantis), and are now pitching the idea to broadcasters.
So, the preparations have been made, the bait has been set, and now they are just awaiting broadcasters to be lured to their creation so that they can ignite the flames of the Wicker Man to let viewers watch it burn once again, in all of its glory!
(Images: IMdB)
The Wicker Man (1973) follows Police Sergeant Neil Howie (Edward Woodward) on his investigation into a missing girl on an outer Hebridean island known as Summerisle. Unwittingly falling into the trap of the Summerislanders, pagan cultists who at the behest of Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee) burn Howie inside the Wicker Man as a sacrifice to bring about a better harvest. The 2006 remake starring Nicholas Cage follows a story along similar lines.
Howard Overman has said that the series will be different to the original but “explore the same themes of sacrifice, superstition and ritual that were at its core.” And Cavendish, co-founder of The Imaginarium, described Overman as having created “a bold, shocking and unique series, pulling the themes and terrifying power of the original Wicker Man into a thrilling modern setting.”
Potential Influences
(Images: IMdB)
The series needs to be a slow-paced mystery that starts off as a psychological thriller before evolving into actual horror, to be loyal to the style of the original. Series with that same sense of drawn-out confusion in a closed off community full of charming but extremely reticent locals, as in The Prisoner and Wayward Pines or in films like Midsommar and Apostle may help inspire it. There is also a darkly comic side to The Wicker Man as locals laugh at the victim’s expense, toying with them through trickery and ambiguous word play, and entertaining themselves or satisfying their pagan deities through degenerate, dangerous or deadly activities. Black humour is certainly an element needed to recapture the true essence of the Wicker Man, found in series like The League of Gentlemen whose Royston Vasey was reportedly influenced by the Summerisle villagers.
(Images: IMdB)
Premise Postulating
The vital storyline components are a pagan cult leader with their community of followers, determined to lure a dutiful and righteous outsider into their midst, in pursuit of a supposed missing person. The pagan cultists working together to keep the missing person secreted away and to deceive the pursuer right up until it is time for them to be burnt inside the Wicker Man, as a sacrifice to improve the community’s fortunes. With a heavy fixation on pagan traditions, improving fertility and obtaining a bountiful harvest. Around that core storyline there is some wiggle room without betraying the franchise entirely, but it will be a hard task keeping the original Wicker Man purists, fans of the Nicholas Cage remake, old and modern audiences alike satisfied, whilst producing enough new material for an entire series.
As originally, Summerislanders were an isolated, island community who had taken up a pagan religion and were seeking supernatural means to remedy their failed harvest because they had no easy access to food or income from abroad or were unwilling to receive it. With everyone brainwashed into Lord Summerisle’s cult from birth and the mainlanders having little to no knowledge of the strange goings on there. If the series is set in the modern day with mobile phones, computers, satellite imagery apart from all other modern technology which allows for closer monitoring of every community on Earth, providing the ability to communicate with anyone from anywhere, with open access to information from all over the Globe, as well as allowing for easier shipments of goods, then the entire premise of the Wicker Man will be put to question in a modern setting. So, a scenario that counteracts this will need to have been invented.
(Images: Freepik)
The cultists could of course be so brainwashed that they do not question their belief system, regardless of their ability to access global information and to make contact with outsiders, as in the 2006 remake. But there will still need to be some way of cutting off the main character that they intend to sacrifice from receiving outside help. Perhaps simply by having no signal in the region or by villagers hacking or stealing their phone or blackmailing them out of asking anyone for assistance. That or there will have to be something like a religious reason for them to have a ban on use of technology. And there will have to be some reason for their community being less accessible and less regulated by the authorities or existing as a standalone island country or religious group with Laws all its own. With Lord Summerisle enforcing a dictator level of censorship and control over their followers.
They could also set the community in a less technologically advanced region of the World, where a more traditional pagan culture could believably still exist, as in Midsommar. In the 1973 film, Sergeant Howie experiences culture shock upon arrival to Summerisle because of how much pagan tradition has seeped into every aspect of the islanders’ day-to-day life but if you add to that them being decades or more behind technologically with no phone signal or internet connection, a person from 2023 being confronted with that would experience an even more severe contrast. So that setting could work well to emphasise the main character’s sense of alienation and disorientation which is crucial to the story.
Honestly, the main difficulty will be in finding actors good enough to live up to the original cast. Someone with the ability to be as charismatically sinister and dominating as Christopher Lee to play Lord or Lady Summerisle the fanatically gleeful pagan leader. And an upstanding citizen counterpart that is as severe but earnest as Edward Woodward with the same sense of overwhelming righteousness driving them to run blindly into Summerisle’s trap. Regardless, as long as there are lots of curious pagan references and rituals, with overtly cheerful cultists, masking their bloodthirsty intentions, and the series sticks to keeping this darker side of them hidden until the very end, when viewers will finally get to revel in the main character keeping their fiery appointment with the Wicker Man. Then it has the potential to be an intriguing addition to the franchise.
(Images: IMdB)
References
Goldbart, M. (2022, October 12). “The Wicker Man” TV Series In Development With Andy Serkis’ The Imaginarium And Studiocanal-Backed Urban Myth. Deadline. https://deadline.com/2022/10/the-wicker-man-studiocanal-andy-serkis-imaginarium-urban-myth-christopher-lee-edward-woodward-1235140861/
