Canadian director Mathieu Ratthe has no credits listing on IMDB but amazingly, he has managed to pull off something that Steven Spielberg has tried but failed (though, one thinks haphazardly) and that’s shoot at least some material from the brilliant Stephen King/Peter Straub 198 fantasy novel THE TALISMAN.

In hoping to garner some attention to maybe strike a deal with Dreamworks, Ratthe took it upon himself to convince actor Cameron Bright, the memorable face of Godsend and also has X-Men and Birth to his name to appear in a short six minute clip (2 of which are credits) showing what Ratthe could do with very limited resources and prove to someone that this material is worth making, and that he is the man for the job.

Previously Spielberg had hired both Vadmin Perelman (House of Sand & Fog) and Ed Zwick (The Last Samuari) at various points to direct it as a feature and most recently two years ago when Ehren Kruger (Scream) was hired as a screenwriter to adapt the novel into a TNT mini-series but budgetery concerns killed that one.

Ratthe says,

“My main objective for creating this piece is to demonstrate my directing ability and my vision to the producers who own the rights to the story”.

Well he certainly caught the web’s attention. /Film ran the story a couple of hours ago and already a few other sites have picked up on it, I’m sure it won’t be too long until someone at Dreamworks gets a hold this…

The film is pretty darn good, he’s done a terrific job of creating that memorable beach and fairground out of King/Straub’s writings and has shot it very much like a King adaptation should be. Great building of tension, fluid and confident camera movements with lots of character time.

Spielberg give this guy a call. He is surely worth a meeting?