Gary Nicholls Imaginarium
The Box of Enlightenment
A steampunk short film based on The Imaginarium Trilogy — and the pilot for a feature.
When an orphan discovers her link to an ancient, powerful relic, she must stop a ruthless lord and a secret society from using it to unleash untold evil upon the world.
The world
1890s. A gritty industrial town in northern England, where jet-packed sorcerers and steam-driven monsters roam.
Eva, a streetwise orphan born in a workhouse, comes of age working in a dangerous bordello known for its secrets as much as its sin. She becomes the target of a ruthless aristocrat, Lord Montague Belvoire. Betrayed, kidnapped and marked for death, she has to navigate a treacherous world of dark magic and shifting loyalties to claim a power that could save mankind — or end it.
The Box holds a metal hand that grants godlike power, but only to one of pure good or pure evil. Eva is the key. How that power gets used is her choice alone.
Think Peaky Blinders meets The Golden Compass, with a pulse of Mad Max steampunk energy: the style of Dickens, the complexity of Lord of the Rings, the steampunk of Hugo, and the darkness of Peaky Blinders.
Dark, suspenseful, mysterious, poignant. It is not a comfortable story.
On the set
These are from the shoot, not from the film — the costumes, the cast and the apparatus. The green you can see behind them is where the 1890s goes in afterwards; everything in front of it was built, sewn and worn.
Characters you have already met
If you have looked through the collection you know some of these people. They were photographed years before there was a script.
- Dr William Percival Stockdale — a physician and inventor of gadgets, respected and well read, a tortured soul since the death of his wife. He builds the Necessitti, a glass orb held in silver clawed hands, without understanding what it sets in motion.
- Samandiriel — a sorceress who crosses her world on a winged steampunk jetpack. Her powers are dark and she uses them only for good. She works with Dr William to instil magic into the Necessitti, and warns him what follows if the relic reaches the wrong hands.
- Eva — born in a workhouse, sold into service as a skivvy, and the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy Admiral who owned the Box. Book One is her story.
- The Airship — Eva carried away from the world she knows, with Lord Montague moving ahead to prepare her confinement.
Around them: Regina Von Black, the bordello madam with a community's respect and a Mafia boss's methods; her twin Cassandra, evil to the core; and Lady Bella Donna, who guards the Box for years and dies for it. The world of the books, in motion.
Who is making it
Gary Nicholls — writer, set and prop designer.
Dawn Wall — actor, director and script consultant, and cast as Samandiriel. An award-winning director, actor and writer from England, based in Denmark and fluent in Danish; she graduated from Copenhagen's film and theatre school in 2017. She is drawn to work that makes you think and rewards a second viewing. She also appears in The Seasons.
Anne Mohr — editor.
Alice Strange, whose music will be used in the film, appears in The Secret Falls and Decadence.
It is shot in the style of Guillermo del Toro: tactile, practical, built rather than generated. Steampunk suits film for exactly that reason — it is visually cinematic, thematically rich, and it answers the current hunger for worlds that are not mostly CGI. The ingredients are there. It needs a fearless filmmaker and a studio willing to trust the vision, and this is our start.
What it means for Book Two
Yes, I know you have all been waiting for Book Two — including me.
Book Two is now The Imaginarium: The Box of Enlightenment, and its release will coincide with the film. Writing the script has let me steer Book Three, introduce a whole new scenario and change the ending. I am excited about the finale again.
Where it is now
The crowdfunding campaign has closed and the film is being finished. The short runs about ten minutes and stands as the pilot for a feature of around two hours.
The secrets we guard are the ones that devour us whole. But some secrets... some secrets refuse to stay silent.
For press, programmers and producers
The full pitch document — synopsis, characters, references and the team — is available on request.
This project represents the heart of my artistic journey. Think outside the box they say — well, if there is a box it is already too late.
The books it comes from
Of the thousand copies of Book One, over eight hundred have gone, all over the world.