Filmmaker Sam Raimi, writer-director of “Spider-Man” and “Evil Dead” movies, is moving deeper into prime-time television.
Raimi and Joshua Donen’s Stars Road Entertainment has inked a two-year deal with Sony Pictures TV and has hired CBS senior vice president of drama Robert Zotnowski to spearhead the company’s TV efforts.
Zotnowski has been running the CBS drama department with Christina Davis since the ascent of Nina Tassler to entertainment president in 2004. Davis is expected to run the department solo after Zotnowski exits Friday.
Zotnowski said the goal for Stars Road is to expand its presence on broadcast TV and cable, with a primary focus on drama. Stars Road will develop material of all genres except horror, which will continue to be handled by Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures.
As a TV producer with partner Robert Tapert, Raimi has made his mark in the action-adventure genre for first-run syndication with such hits as “Xena: Princess Warrior” and “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys” and most recently “Legend of the Seeker,” on which Donen also serves as an executive producer.
Raimi’s prime-time efforts have been primarily in the horror genre (CBS’ “American Gothic” and the CW’s “13: Fear Is Real”) and in action-adventure (ABC’s “Spy Game” and Starz’s upcoming “Spartacus”).
On the big screen, Raimi most recently wrote and directed the horror feature “Drag Me to Hell.” He has strong ties with Sony as the director of the studio’s blockbuster “Spider-Man” franchise.
Director Joe Dante (Gremlins and The Howling) will be bringing us “The Hole”. Chris Massoglia, and Haley Bennett, play two brothers that move to a new town and discover a bottomless hole in the basement of their house that brings their nightmares to life. Together with with neighbor played by actress Haley Bennett (The Haunting of Molly Hartley) they must face their darkest fears in order to ut an end to the mystery of the hole.
Joe Dante
The movie, written by Mark L. Smith (Vacancy), was filmed in Vancouver, Canada. “It’s for the younger horror set,” Bennett explains in an interview with the horror buffs at ShockTillYouDrop.com:
“It’s very psychological. We all have fears, especially when we’re younger. I was afraid of clowns. It’s not my fear in the film, but it would be my fear in my life. And the hole feeds on your deepest, darkest fear. You don’t really know if everyone else is seeing what you’re seeing. We’re creating our own realities, but it does happen that we start seeing each other’s fears. We have to face them in order to set us free.”
“The Hole” should be coming to a theater near you sometime in the year 2010.
A horror film-maker sparked a full-scale murder alert after burying a torso in a remote wood.
A shocked teenager found the fake corpse hidden in bushes as he walked his dog.
He called 999 and three police cars plus forensic experts rushed to the copse – only to find the body was a dummy.
Film-maker Geoff Searle, 29, returned from a lunch break to find his corpse had gone. He said: “We couldn’t believe it had just vanished into thin air.
“It was only when my mum asked in the pub that we realised what had happened.”
He was rapped over the knuckles by furious police after triggering the drama while shooting a short horror film, Meat After School in Aston End, near Stevenage, Herts.
The police said: “We had no prior knowledge of the production, which presented a challenge in the initial response.”
With the network increasing its scripted shows and teen horror continuing to perform well at the box office, MTV has commissioned its first stab at the popular genre.
In “My Super Psycho Sweet 16,” a privileged teen’s birthday bash at a roller rink is interrupted by a serial killer. The title and concept plays off the network’s reality hit “My Super Sweet 16,” which chronicles the lavish birthday parties of pampered kids.
The movie already has been shot and is “pretty graphic,” according to MTV senior vp production Chris Linn. The network plans to release an uncut, download-to-own version in addition to the edited telecast.
“Psycho Sweet 16″ is among a trio of films the network is working on that have ties to current series. Also green-lighted is the musical “Turn the Beat Around,” which centers on a young dancer and ties into the reality show “America’s Best Dance Crew.” The network also is developing a movie version of its reality series “Made,” about a band nerd who makes the cheerleading squad.
The Plot: After a teen’s premonition of a deadly race-car crash helps saves the lives of his peers, Death sets out to collect those who evaded their end.
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On August 28th, Death enters a new dimension: 3D.
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For 10 years, one franchise reinvented Death. On August 28th, Death saved the best for 3D.
Mexican beauty Salma Hayek may be known for her feminine curves, but the actress will now be seen sporting a big hairy moustache and beard for her upcoming film ‘Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant’.
The ‘Frida’ star is playing the role of Madame Truska in the new film which follows a young boy who meets a mysterious man at a freak show who turns out to be a vampire, Mirror online reported.
The film will be helmed by Paul Weitz who is famous for works like ‘American Pie’ and Hugh Grant starrer ‘About A Boy’.
‘Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant’ will hit the screens on October 23.
Michael Sheen as Head Vampire in Twilight: New Moon
From IndieWire.com
Michael Sheen is as driven as the soccer coach he plays in Toronto-bound The Damned United.
In demand for a range of roles, the Welsh-born stage actor has conquered London and Broadway, smart movies and genre franchises. He starred as Lucian, king of the werewolves in all three Underworld movies. (Screen Gems released Patrick Tatopoulous’s Underworld 3: Rise of the Lycans in January.)
This summer Sheen traded in one set of hair extensions and fake incisors for another: now he is playing head vampire of The Volturi in Twilight: New Moon, directed by Chris Weitz. The film is due in November.
On stage in London and New York and in the Ron Howard movie Frost/Nixon, Sheen held his own with Frank Langella as they reenacted the 1977 ramp-up and television face-off between cheery TV host David Frost and embittered ex-president Richard M. Nixon. Sheen shares a special relationship with Frost/Nixon writer Peter Morgan. Sheen starred as Tony Blair in both TV’s The Deal and Stephen Frear’s Oscar-winning The Queen. Now Sheen stars in yet another plum role from Morgan, the Brit soccer flick The Damned United, directed by Tom Hooper (John Adams). In it Sheen plays a brash, controversial, alcoholic, arrogant and charismatic soccer coach. “Peter has a knack for making subjects accessible,” Sheen told me at a meeting at the L’ermitage Hotel last year. “Initially, Frost/Nixon and The Queen were both a hard sell.” Morgan was going to direct The Special Relationship, in which Sheen continued as Blair opposite Dennis Quaid and Hope Davis as Bill and Hillary Clinton, but Richard Loncraine took over the helm.
“But Sheen’s willingness to embrace versatility may have a downside, he admits: you risk not creating a brand identity. “I enjoy the challenge of playing lots of different characters and having people accept me as that character.”
Sony Pictures Classics opens The Damned United in limited release on October 5. Next Sheen co-stars opposite Samuel L. Jackson in Gregor Jordan’s Unthinkable, and voices the White Rabbit in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.
Fox Home Entertainment is promoting their upcoming direct to DVD release of ‘Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead’. You can check out the full feature when it arrives on DVD on October 20th.
Here’s the story: Three Finger and his disturbed family of inbred cannibals are alive and well-fed. The first course for the bloodthirsty family comes when a group of campers arrive, realizing only too late that ticks aren’t the only things that bite in these backwoods. But when some of the most vicious killers in the country escape into the woods from a bus transporting them to prison, Three Finger and his family may have met their match. Will justice be served on the convicted murderers or upon the mutant killers?”
Directed by
Declan O’Brien
Writers
Alan B. McElroy, Turi Meyer, Al Septien
Cast
Tom Frederic … Nate
Janet Montgomery … Alex
Tamer Hassan … Chavez
Gil Kolirin … Floyd Weathers
Tom McKay … Brandon
Christian Contreras … Willy
Jake Curran … Crawford
Chucky Venice … Walter
Make Up Department Yana Stoyanova … makeup and special effects makeup department head
Special Effects Department
Jovko Dogandjiski … special effects assistant
Nikolay Furtunkov … special effects technician
Visual Effects Department
Grits Carter … system engineer
Charles Collyer … digital compositor: Mechnology
Luke Guidici … visual effects editor
Erica Jean … visual effects editor
Action/epic auteur John Woo has announced his latest project will be a martial arts film titled “Jian Nv Jiang Hu” aka The Swordswoman’s World. The 100 million yuan ($14 million) budget movie, set to start filming this October in Shanghai, will star South Korean actor Woo-sung Jung (“The Good, the Bad, and the Weird”) and Michelle Yeoh. Woo’s daughter – Angeles Woo – will also star, playing a ruthless killer. There’s no further details on the plot.
After reviving the “Halloween” franchise, Rob Zombie will next reinvent “The Blob.”
Zombie will write, direct and produce a remake of the 1958 horror classic that launched the career of Steve McQueen. Production will begin next spring.
Zombie’s deal to make “The Blob” his next film comes as Dimension opens “Halloween II,” the Zombie-directed sequel to his 2007 hit “Halloween.”
In the original “Blob,” an object from space crashes into a field, containing a red blob-like substance that absorbs the humans it contacts and grows exponentially. While Zombie was a fan of the original, he’s formulated a decidedly different take that he would not reveal.
“My intention is not to have a big red blobby thing — that’s the first thing I want to change,” Zombie said. “That gigantic Jello-looking thing might have been scary to audiences in the 1950s, but people would laugh now.”
Zombie will produce with Genre Co.’s Richard Saperstein and Brian Witten; original “Blob” producer Jack H. Harris; and Judith Parker Harris of Worldwide Entertainment Corp. and Andy Gould.
Last House on the Left
Saperstein, the former Dimension Films president who developed a relationship with Zombie while they worked on “Halloween,” said that funding is in place to make an R-rated film that will cost around $30 million. The budget model is similar to that of recent fright fare like “Cloverfield” and “District 9,” and they expect to firm a distribution deal before production begins. Genre Co. is in pre-production on the independently financed, Darren Bousman-directed remake “Mother’s Day.”
“I’d been looking to break out of the horror genre, and this really is a science fiction movie about a thing from outer space,” Zombie said. “I intend to make it scary, and the great thing is I have the freedom once again to take it in any crazy direction I want to.”
Zombie has begun writing. He’ll follow the release of “Halloween II” with a new album and tour this fall and get the script done at that time.
Shara Kay and Jeremy Platt will be “Blob” co-producers, and David Mendez is exec producer.
Zombie’s repped by ICM and managed by Spectacle Entertainment’s Andy Gould.
