Stories by @nathanbates

The Shining / Doctor Sleep Duology

In the spirit of the Halloween season, fan-cast a modern day adaptation of The Shining and recast Doctor Sleep.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Two minor characters from William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, find themselves on the road to Elsinore Castle at the behest of the King of Denmark. They encounter a band of players before arriving to find that they are needed to try to discern what troubles the prince Hamlet. Meanwhile, they ponder the meaning of their existence.

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

A straight down the middle adaptation of Hamlet. Cast actors of any age, gender or race/ethnicity just so long as they are alive and working at the time of suggesting.

Marvel 1602

The eight-part series takes place in a timeline where Marvel superheroes exist in the Elizabethan era; faced with the destruction of their world by a mysterious force, the heroes must fight to save their universe.

Gangs of New York (2022)

In 1862, Amsterdam Vallon returns to the Five Points area of New York City seeking revenge against Bill the Butcher, his father's killer.

Napoleon (1972)

What if Stanley Kubrick’s fabled biopic had come to pass?

Josh and Benny Safdie’s The Super Mario Bros. Film™

Impulsive bandwagonning.

I Spilled My Beans on Your Milkshake

Teleported from the 1890’s to the modern day by a mysterious entity, Daniel Plainview and Thomas Wake finds themselves as fish out of the water, begrudgingly agreeing to stick together given their shared temporal displacement experience and seeking to rekindle their respective passions for prospecting and seafaring.

The Game

Nicholas Van Orton is a successful banker who keeps mostly to himself. When his estranged brother Conrad returns on his birthday with an odd gift -- participation in a personalized, real-life game -- Nicholas reluctantly accepts. Initially harmless, the game grows increasingly personal, and Orton begins to fear for his life as he eludes agents from the mysterious game's organizers.

Hail, Caesar! (1994)

In the early 1950s, Eddie Mannix is busy at work trying to solve all the problems of the actors and filmmakers at Capitol Pictures. His latest assignments involve a disgruntled director, a singing cowboy, a beautiful swimmer and a handsome dancer. As if all this wasn't enough, Mannix faces his biggest challenge when Baird Whitlock gets kidnapped while in costume for the swords-and-sandals epic "Hail, Caesar!" If the studio doesn't pay $100,000, it's the end of the line for the movie star.

HBO Max’s Justice League Dark

The actors and actresses I hope will be cast in the (presumably) forthcoming DC comics streamed adaptation.

Kill Bill: Volumes 1 & 2 (1973 - 1974)

Kill Bill. You’ve seen the movies. Now, what if they had been made in the early 70’s?

The Curse of the Wolf Man

Lawrence Talbot, a washed up and embittered actor, returns to his ancestral home in Wales following news of his father’s passing. Their relationship had always been a strained one. The elder Talbot was a hard drinker who strongly opposed his son’s theatrical ambitions. Decades later, having himself turned to drinking, Lawrence seeks to scrape whatever inner peace he may from the funeral proceedings. But these hopes are instantly dashed upon arrival. It seems his father’s body has disappeared(!), and on top of that, the entire town surrounding his family’s estate has sunken into fear and hostility as a string of grisly murders terrorizes the inhabitants. All eyes turn to a caravan of Romani that’s settled on the outskirts of town. Lawrence, with the aid of Inspector Francis Aberline, will try to locate the remains of his estranged father and in the process come face to face with the very monster of his familial history.

Devil in a Blue Dress

An African-American man is hired to find a woman, and gets mixed up in a murderous political scandal.

Martin Scorsese’s Super Mario Bros. (1988)

Two Italian American brothers, both plumbers in their native Brooklyn, New York, find themselves transported to the magical mushroom kingdom where they are tasked with rescuing of a princess from an evil turtle-like beast and his minions.

The Addams Family Reboot

An Addams Family reboot cast that definitely does NOT include Johnny Depp because it’s definitely NOT directed by Tim Burton.

After Hours

An ordinary word processor has the worst night of his life after he agrees to visit a girl in Soho who he met that evening at a coffee shop.

David Lynch’s Superman: For Truth and Justice (1991) / Brave New World (1993)

In the wake of the runaway success of Tim Burton’s Batman, Warner Bros., staying true to form, read all the wrong signs and woo with an unprecedented amount of creative control cult darling filmmaker David Lynch to try and revitalize the Superman franchise. The result is a duology of increasingly surreal films, polarizing to mainstream audiences but that nevertheless showed a deep understanding of the character’s core themes, which were then deftly deconstructed.

Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein

What could have been a perfect marriage of artist and subject matter, ala Jackson and LotR or Spielberg and Abraham Lincoln.

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-03): Alternative Casting

I thought this would suffice as a challenge. TLotR has about as perfectly cast an ensamble as one can get but what if you had to recast each roles within the same late 90s/early 00s time frame as the actual movies?