Danger Mouse’s ROME Inspires a Post-Apocalyptic Horror Film

It’s been a busy day for movie and music inspired projects.  You might remember back in May (article here), when I had mentioned a spaghetti western inspired album by Danger Mouse (Gnarls Barley) and Italian composer Daniele Lupi.  With the help of additional vocals by Norah Jones and Jack White (The White Stripes) the album Rome was born.  Following the success of the album, producers have asked music video director Chris Milk to direct a film project stemming from that album.  Milk previously gave us the heartfelt interactive video “We Used to Wait” by The Arcade Fire which effectively incorporated Google Earth.  Who would have thought seeing your childhood home in a music video would be so creepy and emotional?  This new project is said to include Rome as an “underpinning” for the story that will also be structured around the book The Reapers Are the Angels by Alden Bell.  Anthony Bregman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and the young multimillionaire film lover and savior Megan Ellison (she recently saved and financed the upcoming projects for Paul Thomas Anderson).  In a statement by the two, they had this to say about the project:

“Chris Milk is perhaps the most innovative creative voice working in any art form today, and the ‘Rome’ project criss-crosses at least a dozen of them, including music, animation, live performance, film, web, literature, musicvideos, and graphic novels,”

The story of The Reapers are The Angels is said to take place in a post-apocalyptic world where a young girl is trying to simultaneously survive and find happiness.  The official description of the book is below.

God is a slick god. Temple knows. She knows because of all the crackerjack miracles still to be seen on this ruined globe…

Older than her years and completely alone, Temple is just trying to live one day at a time in a post-apocalyptic world, where the undead roam endlessly, and the remnant of mankind who have survived, at times, seem to retain little humanity themselves.
This is the world she was born into. Temple has known nothing else. Her journey takes her to far-flung places, to people struggling to maintain some semblance of civilization – and to those who have created a new world order for themselves.
When she comes across the helpless Maury, she attempts to set one thing right, if she can just get him back to his family in Texas then maybe it will bring redemption for some of the terrible things she’s done in her past. Because Temple has had to fight to survive, has done things that she’s not proud of and, along the road, she’s made enemies.

Now one vengeful man is determined that, in a world gone mad, killing her is the one thing that makes sense…

Given the amount of talent and creative ideas behind this project, plus the addition of post-apocalyptic horror, I think its fair to say that this film will be high on my radar in the coming year.

You can purchase the album that will be inspiring the film by clicking the link below.

Source: VARIETY