FX has unveiled the trailer and premiere date for its movie re-imagining of A Christmas Carol. The latest adaptation of Charles Dickens’ classic novel was developed by the same team behind the network’s TV series Taboo, which includes writer Steven Knight and producers Tom Hardy and Ridley Scott. Guy Pearce stars in this new retelling as Ebenezer Scrooge opposite a supporting ensemble that features Hardy’s Venom 2 director, Andy Serkis, as the Ghost of Christmas Past, Stephen Graham (The Irishman) as Jacob Marley, and Joe Alwyn (Harriet) as Bob Cratchit.
Traditionally, A Christmas Carol takes place one Christmas Eve in 19th century London, as the skinflint and miserable Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by a series of ghosts (namely, the specter of his former partner, Jacob Marley, and the three spirits of Christmas) and taught valuable lessons, in an effort to save his soul from a dark and terrifying fate. However, by the look of things, Knight and director Nick Murphy (The Awakening) are mixing things up more than a little with this new version. And so far, the results are certainly grittier and bleaker, if nothing else.
The trailer for FX’s A Christmas Carol dropped online today, as part of an announcement confirming the series will premiere next month on Thursday, December 19 (followed by two encore airings the following Sunday, a showing on Christmas Eve, and a final airing on Christmas Day). You can watch the trailer below.
If you didn’t know any better, you might think this was the trailer for Taboo season 2 and not the new version of A Christmas Carol. It’s a far cry from any previous screen adaptation of the story, complete with Scrooge being shown disturbing visions of his neighborhood on fire, people working under horrifying conditions in industrial-era London, a blood-speckled Ghost of Christmas Past wearing a crown of thorns, and Mrs. Cratchit (Vinette Robinson) dropping F-bombs, among other things. Clearly, the intention is to create an unflatteringly grounded portrait of 1800s England as it really was (like Taboo does) and play up the horror aspects of Dickens’ ghost story, but it all comes off as laughably over the top and grimdark when packaged as a two-minute trailer.
A Christmas Carol is not only stylistically similar to Taboo, it even includes a subplot about Ebenezer’s cruel father, Franklin Scrooge (Johnny Harris), and how his memory continues to torment Ebenezer in the present-day, much like Hardy’s James Delaney is haunted by the legacy of his own father on the latter show. Dad issues are a recurring element of Knight’s work in general (having also shown up in his Hardy-led film Locke, as well as this year’s bizarro thriller Serenity), so it’s not surprising to see them pop up again in his Dickensian re-imagining. There are certainly plenty of people who appreciate Knight’s brutal period dramas (he also created Peaky Blinders, lest we forget); whether they’ll feel the same way when he turns his eye to a beloved Christmas classic, well, that remains to be seen.
A Christmas Carol premieres Thursday, December 19 at 7:30 p.m. EST on FX.
Source: FX
