I’m looking forward to Alexandre Aja’s Piranha remake, not because I expect it to be particularly good, but because it looks very gory (something I can always get behind) and I generally tend to like Aja’s films (Mirrors being the one exception). So, it’s with great disappointment that I bring news of the film’s release date shift.
The LA Times is reporting that The Weinstein Company has pulled the film from its April release window and will now release it in August at the earliest. The cynical amongst us are taking this as one more sign that the Weinstein company is in dire financial straits, but the LA Times article insists the move is really about avoiding direct competition with the comic book adaptation Kick-Ass. That makes sense on some levels–as does moving to August or later. May is the start of the summer blockbuster season and Piranha would certainly sink without a trace in those shark-infested waters (ooh, see what I did there?). August is where the dregs of the summer season go to die, and Aja’s film would certainly have a better chance of making some money in that release window than in May-July.
No official release date has been announced (which makes the fact that they put the teaser trailer on Avatar all the more hilarious to me), but once again the Weinsteins look nearly inept. Didn’t these guys rule the world at one point? What the hell happened?
Expect more on this as details come into focus. In the meantime, check out some gory new stills at Bloody-Disgusting.
In roughly a month horror fans will finally get to see Universal’s remake of The Wolfman–and we’ll finally know if all the delays, rumor and innuendo about its troubled path to the screen were true or not. Until then, here’s a look at the first 30 second commercial advertisement for the film.
All I’ll say is that this ad and the trailers make The Wolfman look like it’s going to be action-packed fun with loads of style. Hopefully it’s not a case of cramming all the good stuff into the
Benecio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt, and Hugo Weaving star in the film, which hits theaters on February 12th.
Last time we heard anything about the remake of Juan Antonio Bayona and Guillermo Del Toro’s The Orphanage, it was bad news. Filmmaker Larry Fessenden had been attached to the project as a director, but was now no longer involved with the film in that capacity. With no director, things got pretty quiet.
Variety says that’s about to change, however, with today’s news that Mark Pellington (he of The Mothman Prophecies and Arlington Road fame) is in final negotiations to direct the film. It’s an interesting choice, but I still think a Larry Fessenden version would have been more impressive. I liked Arlington Road so maybe Pellington can bring something interesting to this film.
Fessenden’s not totally out of the production, either. He may not be helming the project, but he did write a script for it with Del Toro. Current reports indicate that’s the script that will be in use when filming eventually commences.
The original film is a spooky ghost story about a woman who takes over the orphanage where she spent her childhood. Things get creepy when she realizes her son is playing with the same “imaginary friend” who terrified her as a kid. It’s one of the more interesting films of the past decade and I say give it a rental if you haven’t checked it out.
I’ll keep you posted on production dates and the like for the remake as the details emerge.
Video ETA has posted a release date for the DVD and Blu-ray version of Steward Hendler’s Sorority Row remake. They actually posted it a few days back but I was saving it for a day when there wasn’t much news. My apologies to all two of you who’ve been sitting on the edge of your seats refreshing the site every ten seconds waiting for this vital information to turn up…
Anyway, according to the site, the film will be available on February 23rd. This makes my headline a lie, unless you celebrate Valentine’s Day eight days after the rest of the world. Sue me. I suck at coming up with post titles on the best of days, so I’m not letting something like the calendar fuck this one up.
Sorority Row stars Audrina Patridge (thanks to the person who pointed out I was spelling her name wrong every time I posted it a few months back), Briana Evigan, Rumer Willis, and a lot of other chicks. When a sorority prank goes wrong and leads to murder, the sisters cover it up. Unfortunately for them, a masked killer knows what’s up and starts knocking them off one by one. The film underperformed at the box office, but maybe it’ll find an audience in the home market. Probably not, though. I just like to be an optimist.
In the wake of the official trailer debut late last week, I now bring you two new photos from Breck Eisner’s updating of George Romero’s The Crazies. They’re not particularly earth-shattering, but I think the movie looks pretty good so I figure I might as well give it some love here at the site. Plus, that picture above kinda looks like it could have been ripped out of Left 4 Dead…
The film follows a small town Sheriff (Timothy Olyphant) and his wife (Radha Mitchell) as they try to restore order to their small town after a toxin in the water supply turns the citizenry into murderous maniacs. Look for The Crazies to make its theatrical debut on February 26th.
I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop with Breck Eisner’s remake of George Romero’s The Crazies–the one where I can finally go “oh, okay, now it looks like a shitty big budget Hollywood remake” and get on with my life, thereby sparing myself loads of potential disappointment. That hasn’t happened so far, which means one of two things: the marketing department at Overture films is really good at their job (so good that they can make a bad movie look great) or that The Crazies may actually be good.
Cynical Mike would normally bet the farm that choice A was your winner, but having seen another new trailer for the film, I’m starting to think The Crazies just may be a pretty decent film instead. The reasoning? The two trailers don’t have a lot of footage in common. When a marketing department is hiding a bad film behind a good trailer, all variations of that trailer will essentially feature the same footage–because, presumably, it’s the only good footage they have to show. The Crazies is taking a more Zombieland approach and giving us trailers with all sorts of new and interesting footage. I can appreciate that–I just hope they don’t fall into the Zombieland trap of showing me 85% of everything awesome before I see the actual movie.
Peep the new trailer below and see for yourself. The film is set to infect theaters on February 26th.
With all the crap swirling around this remake of The Wolfman, it wouldn’t have surprised me if the final nail in the project’s coffin was a cut of the film designed to earn a PG-13 rating. We’ve seen that happen a lot in the past few years as studios shy away from the R in order to have their films presentable to a wider audience. Sometimes it works (Drag Me to Hell was still effective with the more friendly rating), and other times it doesn’t (Terminator: Salvation).
Fortunately for gore fans, we’ll not have to ponder which way The Wolfman might turn out. It’s been rated, and when the film hits theaters next February it will do so with an R for “bloody horror, violence and gore.”
That’s a good start. Let’s hope the rest of the film lives up to expectations.
Despite my mostly anti-remake stance, I’m looking forward to Alex Winter’s updating of The Gate. The original is one of those films that makes me nostalgic for my younger years, and I think Winter’s the kind of guy who not only understands why the original is revered in cult film circles (and will respect that) but also how to keep the feel of the original film while updating it for a newer audience.
H20 Motion Pictures dropped a veritable truckload of information on last night, including teaser concept art (that’s one photo above), a lengthy synopsis, and most intriguingly, news of HR Giger being involved in the creature design. I shouldn’t have to tell anyone reading this site who Giger is, but just in case you don’t know him he created the monsters in a little film called Alien you might have heard of.
Jump past the break for the lengthy press kit details (giant wall of text ahoy!) and check out more storyboard art here.
We’re still a few months out from A Nightmare on Elm Street’s April release date, but it’s never a bad time to release some new photos of one Fred Krueger. That’s exactly what happened yesterday when foreign site Omelete scored three new stills from the upcoming Platinum Dunes reboot.
As usual, there’s still no clear cut definitive shot of Jackie Earle Haley’s face in the full Freddy make-up, but at least two of the three pics feature Herr Krueger. The second one even provides a nice look at the infamous glove we’ve all come to know and love.
The reboot features the acting talents of Haley, Rooney Mara, Clancy Brown, Kyle Gallner and more. Expect the film to ruin your sleep cycle when it lands in theaters on April 30th. Be sure to swing by Omelete to see the other two new photos.
All of the sudden, posters for Universal’s remake of The Wolfman are everywhere. I posted one really cool one yesterday, now today I bring you two more (courtesy of Empire).
I still think yesterday’s poster is the best of all we’ve seen so far, but the one above on the left is pretty nice. I’m not as impressed with the one on the right, if only because it reminds me a lot of the poster for Wrong Turn 3–and that movie fucking sucked.
Here’s to hoping The Wolfman is better. The film hits theaters on February 12th.
