Sony Pictures has unveiled the first trailer for its upcoming reboot of “The Grudge,” a supernatural horror film written and directed by Nicolas Pesce
The Grudge is a reboot of the 2004 film of the same name featuring Sarah Michelle Gellar and is based on the Japanese horror franchise Ju-On which was created by Takashi Shimizu.
Following the 2004 original and the 2006 and 2009 sequels, this is the fourth installment the the “Grudge” franchise.
Sam Raimi, the creator of the horror classics series “Evil Dead”, serve as the film’s producers, along with Rob Tapert and Taka Ichises.
The film stars Andrea Riseborough, Betty Gilpin and John Cho, the film is set for release on January 3, 2020.
Award-winning screenwriter and contest director Alison Parker announced today the launch of the first annual “Killer Shorts Horror Short Screenplay Competition”.
In the past few years, horror shorts have become a goldmine for Hollywood. Feature films such as The Babadook, Lights Out, Mama, and Saw originated as proof-of-concept shorts. Shorts like Whisper, The Burden, Behind, Sweet Tooth, and Milk, were discovered by producers like James Wan and Sam Raimi and are now in development as features.
It all starts with the script.
“Our goal is to motivate, inspire, and guide screenwriters to write horror shorts with feature adaptation potential.” said Alison Parker, Contest Director. “We’re looking for big ideas. The best horror shorts rely heavily on visual scares and unique world building. Putting this kind of terror on the page isn’t for the faint of heart. For the few who succeed, this could be the break that launches their career.” Continue reading →
Director Ruairi Robinson (Fifty Percent Grey, Silent City, BlinkyTM & Leviathan), Academy Award-nominated Irish filmmaker dropped his latest film, Corporate Monster, a proof of concept short, free to view online.
Written by Robinson & Eoin Rogers, the sci-fi horror film, with VFX by Robinson’s The Kaiju Meat Company, stars Kett Turton and Jenna Coleman as a couple confronted with the reality that either he is just dangerously unstable, or there are in fact monsters all around us.
“There’s a growing sense of unease and distrust of authority that’s not really being reflected in popular culture today the way films of the 1970s did in a post-Watergate era. I really miss those movies, and nobody is making them, so I felt compelled to go make one myself,” said Robinson.
In Corporate Monster, after being phased out of his job, a dangerously unstable man’s life spirals out of control when the prescription pills he takes start to have a side effect: they allow him to see the parasitic beings that have long been puppeteering our world from the shadows. The rich and powerful are not even human, and they are feeding on us. He sets about trying to save his girlfriend from them, but it’s just as possible they are just a side effect of the pills, a hallucination. Is he a savior or a monster himself?
On the same week that Warner Bros. Pictures’ “IT: Chapter 2” is dominating the boxoffice comes the release of the final trailer to the studio’s upcoming horror film “Doctor Sleep”.
“Doctor Sleep” is an adaptation of Stephen King’s 2013 novel of the same name, a sequel to King’s 1977 novel The Shining.
The film follows Danny (played by Ewan McGregor) now an adult and an alcoholic, battling the childhood trauma that he experienced with his family in the Overlook Hotel, the main setting of The Shining’s film adaptation from Stanley Kubrick.
The trailer is heavy on nostalgia and references, featuring some iconic characters and images from the original Kubrick film, such as the Overlook Hotel, the Grady twins, young Danny riding his bike through the haunted hallways of the hotel, the elevator gushing blood, and room 237 giving viewers a peek of what may be inside.
We also see a new character named Abra, a teenage girl who has her own powerful extrasensory gift. “I don’t know about magic. I’ve always called it the shining,” McGregor’s Danny tells Abra when the two meet in person for the first time.
There’s a couple of characters from 1980 original that are returning in the sequel: Dick Hallorann, the former cook from the Overlook Hotel and Danny’s mother Wendy, this time played by Carl Lumbly and Alex Essoe respectively.
The film is written and directed by Mike Flanagan, who directed the highly underrated Oculus from 2013, the hit Netflix series “The Haunting of the Hill House” as well as King’s “Gerald’s Game” for Netflix.
The film co-stars Rebecca Ferguson (Mission: Impossible – Fallout), Bruce Greenwood (Gerald’s Game), and child actress Kyliegh Curran. “Doctor Sleep” is set to be released by Warner Bros. Pictures on November 8, 2019.
Principal photography commenced in Chicago this week on Candyman from Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures (MGM) and Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld’s Monkeypaw Productions. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (Us), Teyonah Parris (If Beale Street Could Talk), Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Misfits) and Colman Domingo (Euphoria) have signed on to star in the film and will be accompanied by a lineup of talented local actors from the Chicago area.
Written by Peele and Rosenfeld and directed by rising filmmaker Nia DaCosta (Little Woods), Candyman is a spiritual sequel to the 1992 gothic horror film by Bernard Rose, originally based on Clive Barker’s short story The Forbidden. The film will be shot entirely in Chicago and feature various locations throughout the city, including the neighborhood where the legend began: the now-gentrified North Side where the Cabrini-Green housing projects once stood. Universal Pictures will distribute Candyman globally with the U.S. release date slated for June 12, 2020.
Collaborating with DaCosta is a creative team led by EP and UPM David Kern (The Age of Adaline, The Lincoln Lawyer), director of photography John Guleserian (Love, Simon, Like Crazy); production designer Cara Brower (Us, Twin Peaks [2017]); costume designer Lizzie Cook (Sense8, A Nightmare on Elm Street) and VFX supervisor James Mcquaide ( The Boy, Underworld franchise).
Abdul-Mateen II can next be seen in the upcoming HBO superhero series Watchmen. His additional credits include Black Mirror, The Get Down, the box-office smash hit Aquaman and the Oscar-nominated film The Greatest Showman. It was recently announced that Parris will join the cast of Marvel’s upcoming WandaVision series for Disney+, starring as the iconic superhero “Monica Rambeau.” Parris has also given memorable performances in Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk, Spike Lee’s Chi-Rraq and Justin Simien’s breakout independent film Dear White People. Continue reading →
Robert Eggers is back with his follow up to his 2016 directorial “The Witch”, this time pairing Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson in “The Lighthouse”, an upcoming black-and-white horror film from A24.
The highly-anticipated film’s riveting first trailer has just been released, see below.
Set in a remote and mysterious lighthouse on a New England island in the 1890s, the film follows two lighthouse keepers “just looking to earn a living, on the run,” as they face solitude and their worst nightmares on a storm-ridden deserted island.
“How long have we been on this rock? Five weeks? Two days? Help me to recollect,” Dafoe’s asks Pattinson.
The film had its world premiere on May 19, 2019 at the Cannes Film Festival on May 19, 2019, where Dafoe, Pattinson and director Eggers received critical acclaim, along with the film’s technical aspects.
Pattinson has recently appeared in indie films and worked with renowned directors as Werner Herzog and David Cronenberg as well as gained positive reviews in the crime film “Good Time” and this year’s science-fiction horror film “High Life”. He is also set to appear in Christopher Nolan’s film “Tenet,” set to open July 17, 2020, as well as Matt Reeves’ upcoming Batman film.
Dafoe recently portrayed \Vincent van Gogh in At Eternity’s Gate (2018), which earned him an Academy Award for Best Actor nomination, which shockingly is his first in that category throughout his stunning career.
‘The Lighthouse’ is set for release on October 18, 2019.
Dark Sky Films has released the official trailer premiere for the upcoming horror film, Bliss.
Written, produced & directed by Joe Begos, the film is set to open in theaters and on digital platforms on September 27, 2019.
Here is the film’s official synopsis:
Known for her dark and macabre artwork, painter Dezzy Donahue (Dora Madison) is in a professional rut. Unable to finish her newest commissioned work, Dezzy looks to reignite her creative juices by letting loose-as in, taking every drug in sight and tearing through raucous house parties and heavy metal bars. After a few nights spent with her debauchery-loving friends Courtney (Tru Collins) and Ronnie (Rhys Wakefield), though, Dezzy notices changes within herself. On the positive side, she’s finally painting again, but she’s also developing a strange desire for blood. As someone who has never been able to control her vices in the first place, Dezzy is quickly and violently consumed by this bloodlust.
With his previous films, Almost Human (2013) and The Mind’s Eye (2015), filmmaker Joe Begos won the hearts of horror lovers through his stylistic nostalgia and inhibition-free penchant for brutality. Upping the ante, BLISS roars with searing visuals, kinetic energy, an endearing nastiness, and a ferociously all-in lead performance from Madison. Although it’s set in modern-day Los Angeles, BLISS harkens back to the grimy days of New York City grindhouse cinema, when films like Abel Ferrara’s The Driller Killer and Bill Lustig’s Maniac were the norm.
The ragtag survivors of a zombie apocalypse are back in the latest trailer for “Zombieland: Double Tap”, the sequel to the surprise critical and commercial 2009 hit “Zombieland.”
Yep, the whole gang is back: Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), along with the original Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer and writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese.
In addition, there’s also a few characters new in the sequel such as Zoey Deutch, Rosario Dawson, Thomas Middleditch and Luke Wilson.
Why exactly is Harrelson dressed up as Santa in a scene and then as Elvis in another is still unknown, but it sure sets up some pretty intriguing and hilarious situations.
“Zombieland: Double Tap” is set to be released by Released by Sony Pictures on October 18, 2019.
Here is the film’s official synopsis:
A decade after Zombieland became a hit film and a cult classic, the lead cast (Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Abigail Breslin, and Emma Stone) have reunited with director Ruben Fleischer (Venom) and the original writers Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick (Deadpool) for Zombieland 2: Double Tap. In the sequel, written by Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick and Dave Callaham, through comic mayhem that stretches from the White House and through the heartland, these four slayers must face off against the many new kinds of zombies that have evolved since the first movie, as well as some new human survivors. But most of all, they have to face the growing pains of their own snarky, makeshift family.
L-R: Misha Collins, Jensen Ackles, Jared Padelecki, Alexander Calvert photo: ai photo imaging
Supernatural has been a staple at the annual fan convention at San Diego throughout its run, and on Sunday, the cast bid an emotional and bittersweet farewell ahead of their 15th and last season.
“I’m trying not to cry. Can we all just start crying so I don’t feel so weird?” said Jared Padalecki, one of the series’ co-lead.
“It really is hard to express the takeaway from the experience. 14 years and change is a long time,” Ackles said. “This guy was just in his early 20s, you were just born.”
Other cast-members Misha Collins Alexander, as well as executive producers Robert Singer, Andrew Dabb, Eugenie Ross-Leming, Brad Buckner, and Bob Berens were also present, with co-stars Richard Speight Jr. and Rob Benedict co-moderating the panel.
Panel also clips from each of the 14 seasons, featuring some of the show’s most memorable scenes and catch-phrases which were greeted with cheers from fans in attendance. After the Q&A, the panel also gave away a replica of the 1967 Chevrolet Impala driven by the Winchester brothers in the series and which Dean Winchester refer to as “Baby.”
But it was towards the end of the panel that it hit everyone at Hall H that it really is ending. “Thanks for showing up,” Ackles said, “Without you, we wouldn’t be here. It’s an amazing thing to see this many faces who appreciate what we do.”
“I’m the luckiest man on the planet, my cup floweth over. Thank you guys very much, I’m going to miss you,” an emotional Padalecki said.
The longest-running American live-action fantasy TV series, the show has gained a big following throughout is record breaking run. Created by Eric Kripke, the show recently celebrated its 300th episode and will eventually have aired 327 episodes when all is said and done.
“Supernatural” fifteenth and final season is set to premiere on October 10, 2019.
San Diego Comic-Con started early with its ScareDiego event featuring New Line and Warner Bros. “IT: Chapter Two”
Moderated by Conan O’Brien, the night showcased a gory and scary new trailer, along with three exclusive clips shown throughout the night.
Also joining the festivities were the stars playing the grown-up Loser’s Club: James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, Bill Hader, Jay Ryan, James Ransone, Isaiah Mustafa, and Andy Bean.
This time around, the new trailer featured the grown-up cast a lot more than the initial trailer released a couple of months ago. Chapter Two takes place 27 years after the events of the first film, which took place in 1989.
Bill Skarsgård also returns as Pennywise the Clown. The first film’s director Muschietti and writer Gary Dauberman are also back.
ScareDiego is part of Comic-Con’s preview night and held off San Diego’s Convention Center area. This year, it was held at Spreckels Theatre.
Written by Gary Dauberman from the book by Stephen King, It Chapter Two is set for release on September 6, 2019.