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Two major names in the creature feature business, Gary Dauberman and James Wan’s Atomic Monster banner, known for their collaborations on the hit Annabelle horror movies, have teamed up to remake the 1990s cartoon as a live-action series for Disney+.
Dauberman will write, executive produce and showrun the series with Atomic Monster, the company run by Wan and Michael Clear, joining the executive producing ranks.
Dauberman wrote Annabelle, Annabelle: Creation and Annabelle Comes Homes, which were produced by Atomic Monster and are an integral part of Wan’s The Conjuring Universe, the highest-grossing horror franchise of all time. He also penned Conjuring spinoff The Nun.
The partnership has been fruitful not only because of the box office success, but also professionally, as Dauberman moved from behind the typewriter to behind the camera, making his directorial debut Annabelle Comes Home.
And the two also worked together on Swamp Thing, the short-lived series based on the DC character that streamed on the now-defunct DC Universe platform.
Dude, Gargoyles got fucking dark. It had some comedy, but its overarching narrative was straight up tragedy in the theatrical sense.
It was Shakespearean in some of that tragedy, honestly, to the extent that there are quite a few references to Shakespeare’s works in the show (one of the main characters being named Puck, having the Weird Sisters and Macbeth as actual living characters in the story, etc.).
So take all that, the massive sense of grief felt by each of the main characters, the psychological manipulation that Xanatos loves to engage in, Demona’s dark (and sometimes quite horrifying) sorcery, and just the general sense of these being literal monsters who look like demons in a world that fears them, and you have a great setup for horror.
That plus the curse of being turned to stone every day. I imagine it’s not particularly pleasant either. Doing that in live-action? There’s no way to make that not horrific.
If any '90s Disney animated series could fit within the horror genre, it’s Gargoyles. It’s already halfway there. Well, the first two seasons, at least. Third one was basically a different show with most of the original team having zero involvement and wasn’t even intended to exist but Disney thought they’d milk the franchise (and failed miserably).
I honestly couldn’t see a live-action adaptation being at all faithful if didn’t have elements of horror.
Plus, James Wan did the Aquaman movies, so it’s not like he’s restricted to super dark horror elements. It’s just something these two tend to prefer.
And quite a lot of their stuff leans into the psychological element of horror (rather than just focusing on the jumpy scary bits), which is what I’d expect the focus to be when it comes to Gargoyles.
Only other person I could see doing the show justice is Guillermo del Toro.