John Carpenter may not have directed a feature since 2010’s The Ward, but the Master of Horror has hardly disappeared. […]
“I’ve come very close” to making another film, Carpenter tells Rolling Stone, but “it keeps coming and going, and there’s one reason or another I haven’t.”
One recurring problem is financing. Carpenter makes it pretty clear throughout the interview that making music is considerably more enjoyable than fighting to get a movie funded.
Carpenter’s new graphic novel Cathedral started as a dream about descending beneath a church into a hellish underworld and battling a demon.
But before Carpenter and his collaborators turned it into a graphic novel and album, they actually considered making it a movie.
“If you said right now, ‘I have $200 million here, would you like to make a movie of this?’ I might say yes,” Carpenter says.
There is, however, a rather large problem.
“It’s going to cost way over a hundred million, and I’m old and don’t want to work that hard,” he says. “And it’s much more fun to do music than it is to direct movies.”
So Cathedral: The Movie isn’t happening right now.
But Carpenter certainly isn’t saying never.
Asked whether AI could potentially make something as ambitious as Cathedral cheaper to produce, Carpenter gives a surprisingly open answer.
“If somebody came along and asked me [to make an AI movie], I would certainly consider it,” he says. “I’m not going to say no to anything. But sure, I have mixed feelings about AI.”
Carpenter also tells Rolling Stone that he’s been impressed by how realistic some AI-generated films can look.
Would he actually make one?
“Sure, I would,” Carpenter says.
Then comes the question that seems to determine just about everything when it comes to getting John Carpenter back behind a camera:
“You got some money?”
