It’s been a few months since we’ve heard anything about Dana Mennie’s werewolf film Dark Moon Rising, but that changed this morning when Mennie shared some very cool news with me: Dark Moon Rising has acquired distribution.
The director says “Lightning Strikes Productions has just penned a deal with Grindstone Entertainment and the film will be released through Lionsgate.” Mennie adds that an official release date has yet to be determined, but promises to keep us posted. He believes the film will be released later this year.
Real love and fate collide in a small town girl’s life as Amy falls in love with a mysterious drifter who brings with him a family curse and the unimaginable horror that follows. Bender, who shares the curse with his son, brings hell to Amy’s small town. As Dan and Amy’s love is put to the test, Thibodeaux, an ex-cop from another city who has witnessed Bender’s lust for blood firsthand; Sam, the local sheriff and an ex-homicide detective; and John, a local farmer and Amy’s father, head for the ultimate showdown with Bender and the evil web of terror that he has drawn them all into.
The film features an ensemble cast, including genre favorites Sid Haig and Billy Drago.
Check out the official trailer below and keep it here for details about Dark Moon Rising’s official release date.
Whether or not Werewolves will become horror’s “next big thing” remains to be seen, but it’s not for a lack of effort on Hollywood’s part. Between The Wolfman, Michael Dougherty’s in development series Bitches, Howling and Teen Wolf updates, and that whole Twilight fiasco, I can’t recall a time when the werewolf has ever been more in the spotlight. Fox and Dreamworks now apparently want in on the lycanthropic action, as they’ve announced a new werewolf television series, Howl.
Variety reports that the show will be a collaborative effort between the two companies. it’s being described as “an epic family saga about warring families of werewolves in a small Alaskan town.”
“Alaska is a place where people disappear and now you know why,” writer Joshua Miller said.
The script reflects the changes that are going on in the country, and “metamorphosis and constant change is the basis of werewolf mythology,” he added. “Howl” is about “the psychology of living with change.”
Sounds interesting…but this is Fox we’re talking about. There’s no way they’re letting anything that potentially deep on to the airwaves.
It should also be noted that the above photo has nothing to do with the show.
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.
Universal’s remake of the classic horror film seems to be in the news almost entirely for bad reasons (reports that the film isn’t very good, replacement editors, losing switching soundtrack composers, etc.) but here’s something positive– a cool looking new one sheet.
“Inspired by the classic Universal film that launched a legacy of horror, The Wolfman brings the myth of a cursed man back to its iconic origins. Oscar® winner Benicio Del Toro stars as Lawrence Talbot, a haunted nobleman lured back to his family estate after his brother vanishes. Reunited with his estranged father (Oscar® winner Anthony Hopkins), Talbot sets out to find his brother…and discovers a horrifying destiny for himself.”
I’ve seen all three Underworld movies and I’m still not really sure if I like them or not, but apparently someone out there does because production is moving along on a fourth installment in the seemingly never-ending Vampire/Werewolf war.
THR’s Heat Vision Blog is reporting that the fourth film now has a screenwriter: John Hlavin. If that name isn’t familiar to you, you’ve seen his work if you ever watched FX’s The Shield.
Details about the new film are being kept quiet, but Hlavin did offer up this tidbit. “I can tell you it’s not a prequel.It will satisfy old fans and excite new audiences, meaning that we don’t want to redo the first three movies, so steps are being taken to honor what fans have loved but at the same time introduce fresh elements.“
I’ll tell ya what would excite me–Vic Mackey showing up to pop some caps in vampire and werewolf asses. If that happened, no one would even care if it was a remake, a prequel, or if Kate Beckinsale was coming back. Let’s all cross our fingers and hope this comes to pass.
Every time I think I can’t hear anything more that would make me more concerned about The Wolfman remake, something comes along and proves me wrong. /Film has a good article on the latest crew shuffling on the (apparently) greatly troubled film.
Editor Dennis Virkler is out, replaced by Mark Goldblatt and Walter Murch. To people who don’t pay a lot of attention to the technical aspects of filmmaking, these names don’t really mean much (and I’ll be honest, I didn’t really know much of anything about Virkler until today, either) and the idea of shuffling people around this late in the process seems like it should be bad news. However, as the /Film article points out, Virkler’s worked on some really terrible films (check out his IMDB page if you don’t believe me) while Goldblatt and Murch have worked on films like Apocalypse Now, Godfather 2, and Cameron’s Terminator movies. This is definitely a step in the right direction.
However, the film’s shot–and an editor can only make a film from the footage he’s been given. Getting two editors of Goldblatt and Murch’s skill level is certainly a positive, but it doesn’t do much to allay my uneasy feeling that The Wolfman could well turn out to be a disaster of epic proportions.
I keep hoping (against my intuition that screams otherwise) that the remake of The Wolfman is going to be good. The trailers have looked cool, the posters look cool, and it’s got Benecio Del Toro as the Wolfman–so everything should be coming up Milhouse, right? You’d think so, but every time I turn around there’s some new piece of troubling news about the production coming to light. The old cliche says “where there’s smoke, there’s fire”–and with all of the smoke coming off this film so far, I’m starting to expect we’ll see a full-scale inferno when the film finally hits theaters.
The latest bit of news concerns the film’s score. Cinemusic is reporting that famed composer Danny Elfman has left the project (citing scheduling conflicts) and is now being replaced by Paul Haslinger (whose previous credits include Underworld and Death Race). “Scheduling conflicts” tends to be Hollywood-speak for “we canned you” or “we had irreconcilable creative differences” or “I think this project is shit and I don’t want to be involved with it”. In this case, it’s hard to imagine Elfman getting fired–the guy’s a legend. Would you fire John Williams? Well, Elfman’s is on nearly that level as a score composer. So that leaves one of the other two options, neither of which is promising.
Elfman had reportedly written and recorded a score for the film (said to be “grandly gothic” and in the vein of the music used in Coppola’s re-telling of Dracula). This is leading many to speculate that the studio decided they wanted a more rock-like score for the film (which is what’s featured in the second trailer).
Add this to the stories circulating about the FX issues, the extensive number of reshoots required, and stories of strife from the set, and it’s hard to imagine The Wolfman being a good film–but until I see it for myself (early next February), I’ll keep hoping for the best.
While I’m still disappointed that the remake of The Wolfman isn’t coming out until February of next year, these photos should help me deal with my grief. If that’s not cool enough, the trailer is debuting later today as well.
In case you’re not familiar with the premise of the new film (starring Benicio Del Toro), here’s the synopsis:
The vampire-lycan war is set to go another round, with news that Sony Screen Gems has greenlit a new installment in the popular franchise.
STYD broke the news last night. No word on what narrative direction the project is moving in (is it a sequel to the original two films? Is it a sequel to the prequel?) or who might be returning to appear in it, but one thing we have learned is that the film will be in 3D. Hurray…or something.
Current plans are for the film to make its theatrical debut in January 2011. More news on this one as it develops.
Universal has given the updating of The Wolfman (starring Benicio Del Toro) the shaft once already. Now news is emerging from various sources that the film is shifting release dates again. Are we ever going to see this movie?
The film had been previously scheduled to release on November 6th of this year, but the latest shift has pushed the flick out of 2009 entirely. The new date for the film is February 12th, 2010. Apparently the Milla Jovovich vehicle, The Fourth Kind, is taking the November 2009 release date slot now.
No reason has been publicly given for this new delay. If I were a pessimist (oh and I am…), I might assume that this means the production is troubled in some way. I’d then point out that moving the flick from a November window (right after Halloween and right before Thanksgiving) to the cinematic wasteland of February seems to indicate that Universal isn’t particularly confident in the film as a whole. That would just be me speculating, though…
