Sci-Fi Bulletin: Exploring the Universes of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Spy-fi!

Ghostwatch writer Stephen Volk is working once again with the show’s director Lesley Manning on a new SF project, Extrasensory for Genesius Pictures.

Black Mirror and Fantastic Four star Toby Kebbell will play twin brothers who are recruited for a top-secret experiment by Soviet Russia to test the power of telepathic communication. The film has been developed with and is supported by Film Cymru Wales, and will start shooting in late October 2017.

Stephen Volk exclusively told Sci-Fi Bulletin, “I’m thrilled to be reunited with my brilliant friend and colleague Lesley Manning, who has championed this project from day one. She brought it alive once she came on board and we have a certain telepathy when we work together which is entirely fitting to the subject! It’s her passion project, as it is mine, and I can’t tell you how excited we are to see it approaching the launch pad with Toby Kebbell preparing for take-off!

“I had the idea of a film about a Soviet ESP experiment years ago. Cosmonauts have an almost mystical heritage whereas NASA astronauts are super-engineers, so that seemed fitting for a story which, to me, has a folkloric tone, a ‘once upon a time there were two brothers’ quality, and is about the unknown – whether in the far reaches of space or within the human mind.

“But, though the scale of the film is enormous in terms of physical distance, it is really about the small human scale of a relationship between two people, and how they finally connect, and whether you are talking about two countries or two opposing ideologies or just two people, that is what we all hope for in life, I think. And for the future.”

Lesley Manning added, “Extrasensory is a story with huge heart and soul. As soon as Stephen told me the concept it was a film I wanted to see on the screen.”