We can't wait to see the feature film that sprouts like an eldritch horror from this short by Joseph Nanni, based loosely on a myth first mentioned the H.P. Lovecraft tale "The Last Test." The movie features a creature from the Cthulhu mythos called Shub Niggurath, a "Great Old One" or possibly an Elder God mentioned often in Cthulhian incantations as "the black goat in the woods with a thousand young." Lovecraft himself didn't say much about old Shub, but other Cthulhu mythos writers like August Derleth latched onto the Old One and wrote more about it. So this flick is in the fine tradition of the Cthulhu Mythos, which is to say that Nanni is taking something Lovecraft mentioned a few times and giving it a full story.


Here's the synopsis:

Jacques Cowan is what the French call "a runner of the woods." He may be a foreigner in the new world but Jacques quickly learned the ways of the native people, their language, their routes, and their skills. But he didn't leave his life in another land for adventure, freedom, and wealth - he had much more in mind than trading pelts and cheating death. Jacques had listened intently to the stories that had crossed the ocean, extraordinary tales of mystical creatures and unknown forces. Black Goat finds Jacques mid-hunt, as he closes in on what others thought was a legend. What he doesn't realize is that the legend is on a hunt of its own.


Nanni told Undead Backbrain's Robert Hood that he's in production on a feature based on this short:

We're currently in development and have a rather major distributor working with us. We haven't talked cast yet, although Adam Wilson (Manson, Ending The Eternal) is locked in to play the lead. Production design has started, but I still may reach out to some Lovecraft luminaries for concept design.

One of the concept artists we already know about is Dave Carson, who specializes in Cthulhu-related art. Here you can see his design for Shub Niggurath.

via Undead Backbrain and Avery Guerra