Sleepy Hollow Reboot Writer/Director Teases Film Will Focus on Unexplored Elements From Book

Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is one of the most well-known short stories of all time, as it made famous the legend of the Headless Horseman, a figure who stalked the small New York village. The figure hasn’t earned quite as many adaptations as other well-known literary threats, but Pet Sematary: Bloodlines director Lindsey Anderson Beer is set to develop a new take on the concept. The filmmaker recently noted that, like her approach to the Pet Sematary spinoff, her take on Sleepy Hollow will be to bring to life some of the overlooked elements of the source material that don’t take as much prominence in other iterations of the character. Pet Sematary: Bloodlines hits Paramount+ on October 6th.

“Sleepy Hollow … There are a lot of skill sets that are similar in terms of its beloved IP,” Anderson Beer shared with Collider when comparing Bloodlines to Sleepy Hollow. “It’s also the same kind of thing where when I was doing Bloodlines, I kept asking myself when I was doing the rewrites, ‘What would I want to know as a Pet Sematary fan? What are the questions left unanswered from the book? And what are the parts of the book that haven’t been explored in movies?’”

She continued, “For instance, the end of [Pet Sematary] says that Jud is the guardian of the woods, and the book says that Jud’s experience with Timmy Baterman is the reason that the evil is even targeting him as an old man, that we know … There are so many things like that that aren’t explored in films, and that a lot of the fans don’t know because they haven’t read the book, or haven’t read the book for so much time.”

In the original “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” story, the schoolteacher Ichabod Crane comes to the titular village and quickly earns affection from a number of residents in the community. He vies for the hand of Katrina Van Tassell, though his competition is the physically imposing Abraham “Brom Bones” Van Brunt. One night, after being told stories of a Headless Horseman known to stalk the town, Ichabod is seemingly chased and attacked by the figure, never to be seen again. 

The story has been adapted most famously into the animated The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow, and the FOX series Sleepy Hollow.

Anderson Beer added, “The legends of Sleepy Hollow are so rich, and as I started doing the research about the Hudson Valley and true ghost stories, I just, I got addicted to that, too.”

Stay tuned for updates on the Sleepy Hollow reboot.

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