Something Wicked This Way Comes

Burbank, CA: Walt Disney Pictures, 1981. Revised script for the 1983 film. Written for the screen by Ray Bradbury, based on his 1962 novel.

After a carnival comes to Green Town, the good citizens are compelled to follow their deepest desires, caught under the spell of the malevolent Mr. Dark (Jonathan Pryce) who can grant those desires on one condition: that the grantees will forever join his freak show.

In 1977, Bradbury sold the film rights to his novel to Paramount. He and director Jack Clayton, whom Bradbury had previously worked with on Moby Dick, produced a completed script. However, production never began and the film was eventually put into turnaround. At the time Walt Disney Pictures was concentrating on films with more mature themes in an attempt to break free from their stereotype as an animation and family film studio. After the success of darker children's fantasy pictures by competing studios, such as Time Bandits and The Dark Crystal, Disney decided to purchase the adaptation's rights and hired Bradbury to produce a new script from scratch. .Set in Greentown, Illinois, but shot on location in Morrisville and Waterville, Vermont.

Gray titled wrappers, noted as Revised on the front wrapper, marked production No. 0233, dated 8/24/81, with credits for novelist and screenwriter Bradbury. Title page wit integral with the first page of the text, dated 8/24/81. 127 leaves, mechanical duplication, with blue revision pages throughout, dated 9/30/81. Pages about Fine, wrapper Near Fine bound internally with three gold brads.

[Book #133045]