EXCLUSIVE: UK stars Woody Norman and Billie Piper will lead Jamie Jones’s supernatural horror Sketchbook, with the UK’s WestEnd Films boarding sales ahead of next month’s American Film Market (AFM).
The film will follow a 14-year-old struggling to find his place back home with his mother after years in foster care. When a group of teenage misfits introduces him to a cursed sketchbook that makes anything drawn inside it come true, he finally finds a way to get everything he wants – friendship, attention and a chance to belong. But as the drawings grow darker and more dangerous, he discovers something inside the book is using him.
The film is produced by Jay Taylor for The Crow UK outfit Electric Shadow alongside Oscar-nominated Whiplash producer David Lancaster for the US’s Rumble Films and Wales-based producer Adam Knopf, a co-producer on Stuffed.
Production is set to begin in Wales in early 2027.
UK filmmaker Jones previously wrote and directed Obey, which premiered at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival and earned him a Bafta Cymru award. Norman was Bafta-nominated for his role in C’mon C’mon, while Piper has most recently been seen in Telluride world premiere Elsinore.
“With Sketchbook, I want to create horror that feels immediate, grounded and impossible to escape,” said Jones. “The book starts as something exciting and irresistible, but also serves as a metaphor for bullying – the fantasy of turning the tables on your tormentor.
“As curiosity becomes obsession, the desire for revenge unleashes terrifying consequences. For me, realism starts with performance. As I did on Obey, I’ll work closely with young actors to create authentic relationships and group dynamics, grounding the horror in relationships and behaviour that feel completely real.”
“Sketchbook is exactly the kind of bold, distinctive filmmaking we want to champion at Electric Shadow,” added Taylor. “Jamie has created a cinematic fable that takes the universal experience of wanting to belong and twists it into something deeply unsettling. The casting of Billie Piper and Woody Norman combined with the exceptional producing talents of David Lancaster and Adam Knopf, against an evocative Welsh setting, will add a dynamism and theatricality, which will thrill international audiences.”
Lancaster added: “Jamie Jones is an incredibly exciting storyteller and has the unique ability to access something deeply human beneath the horror. Sketchbook taps into the adolescent experience in a profoundly moving yet unnerving way.”
“With Woody Norman and Billie Piper attached to star and an exceptional producing team behind the project, we see enormous potential for the film in the international market,” noted WestEnd Films managing director Maya Amsellem.
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