The Transition of Juliet + Romeo

The Transition of Juliet + Romeo is an indie film that's looking for Lovecraftian input and donations to get off the ground. The project is a bizarre marriage of ideas melding Shakespeare with H.P. Lovecraft. It's name is a play on words off Lovecraft's tale, "The Transition of Juan Romero." The film's website offers this description of their modernized and unexpected literary mash-up:

Imagine a world not unlike our own, but a world where William Shakespeare did not write the story of Romeo and Juliet. Instead that story remained untold for 300 years till discovered and reimagined by the horror writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft. It is this story that "The Transition of Juliet + Romeo" hopes to relate to you.

A contemporary tale, Juliet and Romeo are separated not by family feud but by social strata. Romeo is a humble mail clerk in Verona Legal Services and Juliet is the daughter of the CEO; when Juliet's father uses the Necronomicon to summon outer god Yog Sothoth all Hell is literally unleashed. Now our star crossed lovers must battle Fate, the forces of darkness, and parental disapproval so that they might spend eternity together.

The film will combine the survival themes of genre defining horror such as Dawn of the Dead with the Gothic Romance of works such as Dracula to create a new an exciting tale.

In Order to get this Film into Production, Team Gecko are trying to raise £15,000 by getting 15,000 people to give £1 each. In return you'll receive a minimum of a Digital Download of the film after completion and the more you give the more you get with DVD's, Bluerays, Posters, Merchandise, Parts in the Film, And Personal Spin Off Videos.

To get involved you can click on the IndieGoGo widget on the left, or go to our facebook group at http://bit.ly/YogSothoth and pledge to give £1 in August/September. In order for our campaign to succeed we need as many people to pledge their support as possible, so invite all your friends, and family particularly if they're into thoughtful horror/thrillers.

It won't be certain for awhile if this project is able to gather the money needed for production. But there's no question the team has already outdone themselves with the idea. These type of cross-genre cocktails are becoming increasingly popular, and not just in Lovecraftiana. Just look at Pride and Prejudice and Zombies for a perfect example.

Mixing horror with classic mainstream literature may be a useful tool for reintroducing old masters to younger and less literary obsessed audiences. The experiment has not yet been attempted (to my knowledge) with weird fiction or in cinema, but The Transition of Juliet + Romeo will provide a bold exploratory effort, if it's able to advance.

-Grim Blogger