Anna Daniels
We’re just a few days away from the launch of Quibi, the new mobile-only streaming platform. One of the service’s “movies in chapters” that will be available on day one is called When The Streetlights Go On, a murder mystery set in a small town in 1995. Chosen Jacobs (It, Castle Rock) plays a 15-year-old who discovers a pair of murder victims in the woods, and the ramifications of the crime quickly begin to ripple through his community.
Oddly enough, a different version of this show played at the Sundance Film Festival a few years ago. Learn more about that and check out the trailer for the new Quibi version below.
Where The Streetlights Go On Trailer
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mahQOEbhA7o?feature=oembed&w=740&h=416]
With his appearances as young Mike Hanlon in the recent adaptations of Stephen King’s It, and now with this movie, Jacobs is carving out a place for himself in period pieces in which awful things happen to people. It seems as if this film may also be at least partially inspired by King’s writing, and Rebecca Thomas, who directed an episode of the King-influenced Stranger Things, is behind the camera here. Mark Duplass, Tony Hale, Beh Ahlers, Sophie Thatcher, Sam Strike, David Lewis, Queen Latifah, and more round out the cast.
But for me, the most interesting thing about When The Streetlights Go On is its history. Writers Chris Hutton and Eddie O’Keefe wrote the screenplay when they were 21 years old, and it went on to become the second-ranking script on the 2011 Black List (Hollywood’s annual list of favorite unproduced screenplays). Drew Barrymore was once set to direct a $7 million feature film version, but when that never came together, Paramount TV developed the project as a series from director Brett Morgen (The Kid Stays in the Picture). /Film’s Peter Sciretta saw the pilot for that iteration, which was set in the summer of 1983 instead of 1995, at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017, calling it one of the best things he saw at that year’s festival and describing it as a cross between Stand By Me and The Virgin Suicides. Check out the trailer for that version below:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFqzfo0_EAc?feature=oembed&w=740&h=416]
That version never got picked up, but after the writers reworked the script, the project now lives again thanks to Quibi.
Here’s the official description:
After the murder of a beautiful young girl rocks a suburban community, the victim’s sister and her high school peers must struggle to find a sense of normalcy while coming of age in the midst of the murder investigation.
When The Streetlights Go On will be available on Quibi on April 6, 2020.
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