Share
29th March 2025
06:00pm GMT
The makers of the new Irish horror An Taibhse have said that their dream project would be to make a movie or trilogy based on Irish mythology.
Billed as the first-ever Irish-language horror feature film, An Taibhse is in cinemas now. Ahead of its release, JOE spoke to its writer-director John Farrelly, actor and producer Tom Kerrisk, and co-star Livvy Hill about the movie (you can check out that interview right here).
During the conversation, we asked the trio if there was any dream Hollywood project that they would love to work on.
In response, Farrelly and Kerrisk said they would love to put a particularly Irish spin on a Hollywood epic.
The writer-director said:
"I would love a Hollywood production of the Irish mythological saga. A Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones-esque style film or trilogy about Irish mythology, I think the world needs that now.
"I'd love to do an origin story on Fionn Mac Cumhail and the whole Salmon of Knowledge."
Kerrisk added:
"The Brown Bull of Cooley, Ferdiad and Cú Chulainn, that saga is incredible. Queen Maeve, all that.
"Yeah, we're salivating around stuff like that. We don't want to give it away but yeah."
This comes not long after JOE exclusively revealed that “the first Irish mythology movie” is in the works from Ciaran Donnelly (co-creator of Kin) and Stephen Shields (Abigail, The Hole in the Ground). You can read about this project right here.
Also during our interview with the makers of An Taibhse, Farrelly spoke about what classic movies influenced him as he was making the Irish-language horror.
Farrelly's latest is set during the tail end of the Great Famine. It centres around Éamon (Kerrisk) and his daughter Máire (Hill) who, still reeling from the death of a loved one, take on the task of looking after a remote crumbling mansion all by themselves during the winter months - something which quickly descends into a living nightmare.
The main influence was obviously The Shining. Structurally, narratively, it's very similar," the writer-director explained.
"Then, The Witch, in terms of the aesthetics and the atmosphere. Another one was [Princess Diana film] Spencer - a woman trapped in a big mansion. It's very psychological, so that was another.
"But then a lot of [Nosferatu and The Witch director] Robert Eggers' work. I love how he keeps everything so authentic to the time period and it's so atmospheric.
"The other one would be David Lynch's Mulholland Drive. I remember I saw that and I said: 'Oh, I can now tell this story because of how psychological, experimental that is.'
"I was like: 'This is perfect.' And then you have all these theories afterwards. I watched it with my friends and spent an hour breaking it down, talking."
Read more:
Explore more on these topics:
The JOE Film Club Quiz: Week 84
movies tv
