John Landis directing GHOULISHLY YOURS, WILLIAM M. GAINES

By Matt Holmes / June 25, 2011

Man, this is really cool news. John Landis, the geeky horror film lover who gave us AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON and can often be seen on documentaries for classic horror, has setup such a cool sounding movie that I'm pretty certain he's the happiest guy in Hollywood right now. The movie is titled GHOULISHLY YOURS, WILLIAM M. GAINES and if you hadn't guessed it will be a biopic based on the life of the famous publisher of EC Comics and Mad magazine. Landis will direct as well as co-writing the script with Jesse Eisenberg.

William Gaines was the son of Max Gaines, a publisher for a subsidiary of DC Comics who was an influential figure in proposing news stands to sell comics, and was also the guy who gave the go-ahead to the first female superhero, Wonder Woman. When his father died in an unfortunate boat accident, William took on the family business of EC Comics (Educational and Entertaining Comics) and would find his niche in publishing cool horror, sci-fi and fantasy comics such as the famous yarns Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, Weird Science and more, all of which would influence comic artists and film directors to this day. They were considered to be the first comics aimed at adults, with horror tales given satirical and social undertones and often twist endings which would precede writers like Stephen King and Clive Barker by many years. I love those Tales from the Crypt and Weird Science original runs, and I often spend many nights on eBay looking for cool back issues I've never read, or sitting up in bed late night re-reading some of the ones I own. This could be frikkin' awesome and I'm so glad Landis has found a project like this after failing to land the job of directing THE WOLF MAN remake.

source - variety