Hello, everyone! I’m Walter Rastelli, an Italian filmmaker.
I’ve studied cinema since I was young; I’ve made some short films and some of them received several awards, in Italy and abroad.
The first time I read something by Lovecraft was when I was fifteen. And the first stories I read were The Call of Cthulhu and The Shadow Over Innsmouth. It was the beginning of a new era for me: Lovecraft and his world fascinated me like nothing ever before.
During high school I started thinking of making a movie about Lovecraft and his creatures… Searching the Internet, I didn’t find anything faithfully representing the story of Cthulhu or the inhabitants of Innsmouth. So I started writing the script, dutifully following the two stories and weaving them together with caution.
After many years the script was ready, but I’ve realized it was just an utopian idea…
Or maybe not?
I got some notions of 3D animation and doing the movie in this way seemed like the best approach. So I assembled a team of designers, 3D modelers, animators and we started to work on this teaser trailer…
While we were writing the script we realized the impossibility of making the film in live action, at least in a satisfactory and professional way for our means. Setting everything in 1920’s America (and we’re Italians …) is quite impossible for us. It would be just as impossible to create locations such as the fantastical R’lyeh, the foreboding Innsmouth and many others – not to mention Cthulhu himself! Animation seemed the solution to the problem. Animation affords a greater, more precise style, as well as being more artistic and functional to the story.
The spirit that moves the project is manifested in fidelity to the original work of Lovecraft, trying to weave and bring together two apparently disconnected events, but which will reveal the truth behind the sinister cult of Cthulhu. The idea was born about eight years ago and, after a period of writing lasting a couple of years, it finally landed on Indiegogo. Although the film is still in pre-production, an animatic of the first ten minutes is already available, with the voices of the characters. The project includes voice actors such as Graham Rowat (Bioshock 2 and GTA V) and Joe Cliff Thompson (narrator in Sword Legacy: Omen).
In 1926, a young student finds, among documents left to him by his deceased great-uncle, a clay statuette representing a strange monster… From the notes of his uncle, he learns that the sculpture is the work of contemporary artist Henry Wilcox, who made it after awakening from a nightmare. Driven by his strong curiosity, the young man begins to connect several stories, like puzzle pieces coming from different places and different times.
What combines the delirious nightmares of a young artist, the report of an elderly New Orleans police inspector, the story of a Greenland expedition, and the diary of a Norwegian sailor who died in mysterious circumstances?
What is the unholy Cult of Cthulhu that unites all these stories?
In parallel, another student travels with the intention of visiting the most characteristic location in Massachusetts. He arrives in the sinister harbor town of Innsmouth, whose gloomy and mysterious citizens hide an enormous and unspeakable secret…
Between the walls of those houses, horror awaits the innocent prey…
There are no film adaptations based on Lovecraft’s works that are loyal to them. The only exception is the medium-length film “The Call of Cthulhu”, realized in 2005 by H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society. Lovecraft’s Call of Cthulhu – The Movie was born to fill this gap, and to give to the millions of fans of the author a transposition in 3D animation of two of his most successful stories: “The Call of Cthulhu” and “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”.
You can check out the entire project here: https://www.igg.me/at/callofcthulhumovie
Thank you so much!
Fhtagn!
Trailer:
Submitted By:
Walter Rastelli
