According to this SciFi Wire interview with director David Cunningham, some changes from the original novel are afoot in the highly-anticipated-by-Sean film version of The Dark Is Rising, most notably that main character Will is now an American 13-year-old instead of a British 11-year-old. That’s fine, I guess. The meat of the piece is really in this quote from Cunningham, though:
…my attempt has been is to try and do it through a more modern lens, so that the filmic style is much more today, versus much more classical, as many fantasy films are shot. And so we’re really trying to make this ride feel not like a fantasy film, feel very today, like it’s happening to someone you would know and recognize and understand.
Interesting.