Some random bits of news about 'Catacombs'...

David Elliot on Catacombs
Source: Edward Douglas July 25, 2005


Last week at Comic-Con International, during the Lions Gate horror panel, the company's President of Acquisitions Peter Block told us a bit about their upcoming horror thriller Catacombs from the producers of Saw. He whetted our appetite with the film's premise about a woman, played by Shannyn Sossamon, who visits her sister in Paris, and the two of them go to an all-night rave in the Paris catacombs, which just so happens to be filled with dead bodies. Somehow, Shannyn gets lost and…cue incidental music…she may not be alone down there.

This weekend, ComingSoon.net had a chance to talk to the film's co-writer and co-director David Elliot while he was in town promoting the upcoming John Singleton movie Four Brothers, which he wrote with his regular writing partner Paul Lovett. We were rather surprised to learn that Elliot's partner for Catacombs was none other than comic book artist Tomm Coker, and that they had already finished filming it. He told us a bit more about the project and how it came about.

"Tom is a good friend of ours, and he went to the catacombs in Paris, which is 300 miles of abandoned limestone mines under the city," David told us. "About 200 years ago, there was no room left in the cemeteries, so they dug up every dead body in the city and just threw them in there. So what nobody knows is that right underneath Paris, below the Left Bank, is 6 to 7 million dead bodies, so kids break in there and basically, play around, take flashlights and explore, and recently, people started throwing parties and big raves down there. Tomm and I just sort of did a side project. He's a big comic guy and very talented, so we spent weekends and nights working on the script and then met the guys that produced 'Saw' and they loved the idea. They're a writer/director kind of oriented place, so they gave us the shot to direct it, which was really great. We shot in Romania that was a real joy."

Elliot also told us that Coker had some beautiful storyboards for the film, which they might try to release as a book. "He and I were great collaborators in a sense, because I was just a pure writer at one point and he came from doing pictures, so we had a nice way of communicating visually."

Catacombs will be coming out sometime during the first quarter of 2006, but you can get a taste for Elliot's writing with Four Brothers, which comes out August 12.