Posted in
Events, Films, News on
August 21st, 2008
Perkins’ 14, an After Dark Films’ production, and Massify in association with FanLib, will début in theaters nationwide in the January 2009’s After Dark Horrorfest. The feature film is the first of its kind to have completed its development process entirely over the Internet—first Massify.com invited writers to pitch their favorite storyline from which a board of community members would vote for their favorite story, then actors were encouraged to submit audition videos to be cast for the winning story.
Jeremy Donaldson was the winner that pitched the idea of Perkins’ 14. The story is a killer thriller that follows Robert Perkins whose parents were massacred at their home when he was only six years old. Since that dreadful night, he had convinced himself that the assassins would return to finish him off. Perkins, now 34 years old, abducts 14 people to brainwash them into his personal team of psycho killers.
The screenplay was written by Lane Shadgett (Luna Park, All Lost Souls) and directed by award winning Craig Singer (Dark Ride, Dead Dogs Lie, A Good Night to Die), who also directed a previous After Dark Horrorfest release that grossed rather successful numbers. Perkins’ 14 thus far has had great success and has now gone into post-production based in NYC.
Posted in
Films, Reviews on
August 21st, 2008
Let the Right One In has been written about here over the last few months. It has won awards and accolades since its debut in Sweden last year. The vampire horror story is based on an international best seller of the same title by Swedish author John Avjide Lindqvist. The screenplay was written by Lindqvist himself and directed by an acclaimed fellow countryman, Tomas Alfredson (Four Shades of Brown). Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in
Comics, Films on
August 21st, 2008
Production for the animated sci-fi feature film, Technotise: Edit and I, has been going on for eight years now and will finally premiere in November this year. The film is the first Serbian animated feature to be created. Writer-director Aleksa Gajic first developed it as a sequel to his Technotise graphic novel.
“The plot is set in Belgrade in 2074. The main character is Edit, a female psychology student. After her sixth failure at the same university exam, she decides to have the chip installed to help her pass. From that moment, her life changes and unusual things start happening to her.”
Rumors are that the animated feature “looks far from being unoriginal, both in style and substance.” Inspiration for the graphics came from a mixture of Japanese anime and realistic drawings with static scenes, emphasized atmosphere, and authentic artistic expression. The process also included explorations in classic 2D animation and transitioned to improved 3D animation followed by vector animation.
Posted in
Reviews on
August 20th, 2008
Children of the Corn, the remake for the Sci Fi Channel, has landed Heroes’ David Anders and Battlestar Galactica’s Kandyse McClure as leads. Principal photography begins September 3 in Iowa with a 2009 air date being planned.
The synopsis pretty much follows the original Stephen King story: Vietnam vet Burt and his wife Vicky recognize their marriage is in deep trouble. In an effort to reconnect, they try for a second honeymoon by driving across country. One stop is in a rural community with something wicked growing amidst the corn fields.
Posted in
Films, News on
August 20th, 2008
Even though Death Race is a remake of the 1970s Roger Corman thriller Death Race 2000, screenwriter Adam Stone has filed a copyright infringement suit against the film, due to open on Friday. Rather than see Corman elements, all he sees are the similarities between his project, Joust, which he claims was once seen by director Paul S.W. Anderson and producer Jeremy Bolt.
Stone’s suit, according to The Hollywood Reporter, alleges that Bolt kept a copy of the screenplay and used that for the new film from Universal Studios’ Rogue Pictures division. He can find 39 points of similarity and asks a judge to prevent the film from opening.
Posted in
Films, News on
August 20th, 2008
Hard to believe little Chucky is about to turn 20. And yet, not only is his birthday being celebrated with a special edition DVD of Child’s Play, there’s a remake in the offing. Don Mancini and David Kirshner, the brains behind the franchise, talked with Ain’t it Cool News about their child.
In looking over the series, the producers say the remake is in response to fans wishing the series was out-and-out horror once again, so a reboot was called for, one in which Mancini will write and direct. Having said that, Brad Dourif will still be providing the maniacal mannequin with a voice.
”I think what we are mainly responding to, David and I, is the will of the fans, which is really telling us that they want to see a scary Chucky movie again,” Mancini said. “They want to go back to the straightforward horror rather than the horror comedy. I think it has the potential to be scarier than the original based on the stuff we are talking about, which I know sounds very mysterious and abstract, but anyone in our position would say that at this point, but as you pointed out we do have the advantage of being the people who created the franchise in the first place.”
Posted in
Events, Films, News on
August 20th, 2008
Exit Speed will have its North American premiere next week, August 26, in Dallas. The film is a thriller as ten people are tormented by a gang of bikers out of their mind from meth. Rather than submit, they fight back in a remote desert stretch of the country. The film stars Fred Ward (Tremors), Desmond Harrington (Wrong Turn) and Lea Thompson (Back to the Future) and is directed by Scott Ziehl (Demon Hunter).
The film is sponsoring a contest for the premiere at their website.
Posted in
Films, News on
August 20th, 2008
George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead 2 is set to begin shooting September 15 in Toronto, which is a far cry from the series’ humble beginnings in Pittsburgh. No casting has been announced but word is out that the sixth installment will told in a similar first-person style, as the surviving characters from the last film find a ferry and head to an island for sanctuary. Unfortunately, the zombies are already there and that’s when the fun begins.
Posted in
Films, News on
August 20th, 2008
According to The Hollywood Reporter, MGM has confirmed that it will produce a remake of Tobe Hooper’s classic 1982 horror film, Poltergeist. Steven Spielberg co-wrote the original script with Hooper (and is said to have largely directed the film), which grossed $122 million worldwide and received Oscar nominations for the film’s visual effects, sound effects, and score.
Juliet Snowden and Stiles White, both veterans of the genre, will write the remake for MGM. B-D supplies this short synopsis: Poltergiest is “the story of a suburban home built over an Indian burial ground and thus inhabited by a nasty spook.” Director and cast is currently still in the works.
Recent work by Snowden and Stiles includes co-writing the script for Summit Entertainment’s Knowing (March 2009), directed by Alex Proyas and Platinum Dunes’ remake of The Birds for Universal. The duo are also known for their script in the 2005 release of Boogeyman for Sam Raimi and Ghost House, which grossed $46 million.
Posted in
Films, News on
August 20th, 2008
First to put things in perspective, artists in France are very protected so that it allows for a more personal vision, especially in filmmaking, but France however, has never been a country particularly fond of the horror genre. The majority of French financers have always been against producing horror movies, leaving that arena for American filmmakers to gad in. So when the opportunity came through for writer-director Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs to be financed, he did not hesitate to truly explore the darkness that surrounds us.
The film is set in France in the early 1970’s when a girl, abducted over a year ago, resurfaces. The police discover that she had been confined in an old slaughterhouse, but she displays no signs of sexual abuse—there has to be a reason for her abduction and how could she have escaped?
Martyrs is filled with suspense, blood, and gore, but for Pascal Laugier, Martyrs has been more a metaphorical way of reacting to the world’s state of affairs. Horror quickly became a passion for Laugier when he saw it as a tool and an outlet for communication about his pessimistic view of urban societies. His inspiration for the concept came from listening to himself he tells B-D in an interview. Read the rest of this entry »
