Washington Irving described Ichabod Crane as “tall, but exceedingly lank”, with hands that “dangled a mile out of his sleeves” and a general resemblance to a scarecrow that had slipped its pole. Sony’s new version appears to have read that description and gone the other way. Deadline reports that Nicholas Galitzine, recently seen swinging the Power Sword as He-Man in Amazon MGM’s Masters of the Universe, is in final talks to play Ichabod in Hollow, opposite Sydney Sweeney as Katrina Van Tassel.
Hollow adapts Lindsey Anderson Beer’s forthcoming debut novel, which retells Irving’s 1820 “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” from Katrina’s point of view. Beer will write, produce and direct; her previous outing as director was Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, so she knows her way around a haunted New England backwater. Belmont Cameli is reportedly set to play Brom Bones, Ichabod’s rival for Katrina’s hand, and Alexandra Banks and Spencer Walken are executive producers. The project is billed as a blend of “gothic atmosphere, psychological intrigue and erotic thriller”. That is not a sentence anyone has previously used about the Headless Horseman.
The deal isn’t closed yet: “final talks” is the trade-press term for “the lawyers are reading it”. If it goes ahead, Galitzine joins a long line of men who have lost their nerve on the road out of Tarrytown. They include the gangly schoolmaster Bing Crosby crooned for in Disney’s 1949 cartoon, Johnny Depp’s fainting constable in Tim Burton’s 1999 film, and Tom Mison’s time-travelling Ichabod in Fox’s 2013 series, which we covered at the time with a straighter face than it deserved.
Giving Katrina the story is a smart idea. In Irving’s tale she is less a character than a prize, and Ichabod courts her largely because he has had a good look at her father’s larder and imagined every pig in it roasted. A version in which she gets to tell her own story could be interesting, and the erotic-thriller element suggests this Katrina is not thinking about the pigs.
There’s no release date, and the novel hasn’t been published, so the film is adapting a book nobody has read yet. Irving had the same advantage over his readers in 1820. Let’s hope someone remembers to give the Horseman something to do besides ride past in soft focus.
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