James Cameron Gets Medieval With The Devils

The King of the World meets Lord Grimdark as Cameron options Joe Abercrombie’s brutal adventure novel.

We thought James Cameron was happy to spend the rest of his life churning out Avatar sequels and taking the odd dip into the lightless depths of the ocean. Turns out we were wrong. The director of The Terminator and Titanic has non-Pandora-related plans. Specifically, he’s keen to adapt The Devils, the latest book from dark fantasy author Joe Abercrombie.

Cameron announced on Meta that his company, Lightstorm Entertainment, acquired the rights to The Devils, which was published on May 5 and immediately shot up the best seller lists. Essentially “The Dirty Dozen in fantasy Europe”, the book sees a ragtag team of honest-to-Hammer monsters tasked with installing a pretender on the suddenly vacant throne before the elves show up and eat everyone. Yes, elves – don’t think Tolkien, think “horrifyingly cruel and inhuman demons”. Read some folklore – elves and fairies are bad news. You can blame the Victorian era for ever thinking otherwise.

As for Abercrombie, or Lord Grimdark as he’s known (no, really), he made his bones in 2006 with the excellent The First Law trilogy, and has been fanging out grim ‘n’ gritty fantasy tomes on the reg ever since. Even his YA stuff is not for the faint of heart, as I learned a decade back when I interviewed him.

James Cameron‘s a fan, too. The deep-diving director enthused, “How do I describe The Devils? A sharply witty horror adventure? An epic battle between good and evil except most of the time you can’t tell which is which? A twisted, stylish, alt-universe middle-ages romp, where your best hope of survival is the monsters themselves? This is Joe Abercrombie in absolute peak form, opening up a whole new world and an ensemble of delicious new characters. The twists and turns come at a rollercoaster pace, and with Joe’s signature acerbic wit and style. The Devils showcases Joe’s jaundiced view of human nature, in all its dark, selfish glory, as told through some decidedly un-human characters. But of course, Joe always teases with the flickers of redemption that make it all worthwhile – and ultimately quite heartwrenching.”

Abercrombie got in on the love-in, too, saying, “James Cameron has been thrilling audiences, including me, by putting the impossible on film for over four decades. No one can balance mind-blowing action and spectacle with gut-wrenching personal stakes and story the way he does. I can’t think of anyone better to bring this weird and wonderful monster of a book to the screen.” And yeah, fair call.

First, Cameron’s got Avatar: Fire and Water on the slate, scheduled for release this Christmas. But then we have a four year gap until the next Avatar sequel – surely that’s enough time to knock out medieval monster mash like The Devils. Still, however long it takes, this is definitely unexplored territory for Big Jim, and we can’t wait to see what he does with it.