First time filmmaker Morna Ciraki e-mailed me a bit ago asking if I’d like to see her proof of concept trailer for a possible screen adaptation of Mark Wheaton’s novel Sunday Billy Sunday. Ciraki announced her intentions to direct a feature film last year.
“Sunday Billy Sunday is a sort of Friday the 13th meets Lord of the Flies story involving a priest who, upon witnessing a miracle, is driven mad by his attempts to divine its meaning,” she tells us. “In hopes of sparking Divine Intervention, he goes to his East Texas summer camp and begins to kill 99 kids – and make them turn on one another – to force Gods hand. In the midst of this, four teenagers Mark, Todd, Faith, and Maia fall in and out of love, discover where their beliefs truly lie, and come of age as their friends are slaughtered around them.”
With the trailer complete, Ciraki is now on the road to making the feature a reality, working closely with Wheaton on translating the book to screen.
Want to see some mayhem? Check out the trailer inside.
Emmy-winning sfx make-up artist Dean Jones (X-Men: First Class) , stunt coordinators Chase Rivera (True Blood) and Kyle Weishaar (X-Men: First Class), concept artist Neil DMonte (The Mummy, Star Wars: Episode I), production designer Paul Rice (I Am Legend) and cinematographer Greg Ephraim (music videos by Smashing Pumpkins, Nickelback, Gaslight Anthem) participated in the project. The actors are all Los Angeles-based and the trailer was made over three days in Angeles Forest at Wrightwood, California.
