Blumhouse founder Jason Blum got a lot of blowback last year when he commented on the “difficulty” of finding women to direct a horror film, saying, “There are not a lot of female directors period, and even less who are inclined to do horror.” He later apologized.
And now he’s found a female filmmaker to direct “The Craft” reboot. Zoe Lister-Jones, who wrote, directed and starred in 2017’s “Band Aid,” will be writing and directing the remake of the 1996 film about a coven of high school witches.
The official synopsis: “When starting at a new school, Hannah befriends Tabby, Lourdes, and Frankie, and quickly becomes the fourth member of their Clique. Hannah soon learns that she somehow brings great power to the quartet.”
Lister-Jones also starred in CBS’s “Life in Pieces” and several episodes of “New Girl.”
A remake of the ’90s film has been in the works for years, with “Honeymoon” filmmaker Leigh Janiak once rumored to direct.
The film is reportedly slated for a July production start. Andrew Fleming, who directed the first film, will serve as an executive producer on the remake.
“Ma” makes the rules; break them at your own peril.
Universal and Blumhouse have released the trailer for their upcoming horror thriller, which stars Octavia Spencer as a lonely woman who befriends a group of teens. When they ask her to buy some booze, she invites them to her house to party in the basement.
She lays down some strict rules: One of the kids has to stay sober. Don’t curse. Never go upstairs. And call her “Ma.”
When Ma starts to become terrifyingly obsessive, the teens’ parties begin to turn into nightmares.
The movie reunites Spencer with director Tate Taylor (“The Help,” “Get On Up”). It’s great to see the actress in a lead role and taking on such a different genre from her usual biopics and historical dramas.
Amazon has partnered with the production company behind the TV shows “The Purge” and “Sharp Objects” to bring us more creepy thrills.
Blumhouse TV has reached an agreement with the retail and streaming giant to produce a series of eight thrillers. The movies will be “linked thematically,” per THR, and reach audiences in more than 200 territories via Prime Video. It’s Amazon Studios’ first deal involving global-direct to service feature-length programs, Deadline reports.
Blumhouse founder Jason Blum expressed excitement about the company being able to “deliver its signature chills and thrills” to such a wide swath of the global population. He plans to make representation a priority when it comes to the projects’ directors. It’s “a great opportunity for Blumhouse Television to empower underrepresented filmmakers offering a fresh take on the dark genres loved by fans the world over,” he said.
We don’t know yet what the timeline for the films’ respective releases will be, but we look forward to the “fear, shock and all things spinetingling” (in the words of Amazon Studios Head Jennifer Salke) that Blum brings.
Bloody Disgusting reports that LeBron James and his Springhill Entertainment are in talks with Vertigo Entertainment for this “Friday the 13th” reboot. Apparently LeBron is a huge horror fan, and BD even dug up one of his old tweets on the franchise:
Friday the 13th! Jason Vorhees is one of my favorites. Still don't understand how he caught people running and he just walked though.
However, it appears to be early days on the talks, and there may be some legal snags to get through.
According to Screen Rant, the franchise has stalled since the 2009 reboot, due in large part to legal issues concerning distribution rights. Victor Miller — who wrote the script for the first “Friday the 13th” movie in 1980, creating the character of Jason Voorhees — just won a legal battle against producers Horror, Inc. That gives Miller the rights, for now, although the producers are appealing the latest judgment.
There have been 12 films in the franchise so far, from 1980 to 2009, along with a TV show, games, and merchandising — including Jason’s mask, which has been a Halloween costume favorite for decades.
Interestingly enough, Blumhouse chief Jason Blum has also mentioned wanting to do a “Friday the 13th” movie. He just had a massive success bringing back “Halloween,” so — no offense to LeBron James — if it came down to LeBron vs. Blumhouse, we’d go with the proven track record. But it’s not going to come down to us.
Stay tuned for any developments on Jason’s latest slasher.
“Happy Death Day” is getting a horror-comedy sequel called “Happy Death Day 2U.” The Blumhouse film arrives in theaters like a bouquet of thorny roses on February 14, 2019.
The “Happy Death Day 2U” trailer has yet to be released online. As Bloody Disgusting noted, Blumhouse did the same thing with “Unfriended: Dark Web” earlier this year — debuting the trailer in theaters and then waiting a few weeks before the trailer showed up online.
But! At least we get this tasty poster, with a nice callback to the first film in that cupcake:
Blumhouse/Universal
Christopher Landon directed the first film, and he also returned to write and direct the sequel, which brings back Jessica Rothe as the perpetually ill-fated Tree Gelbman.
“Chris has done this incredible thing where the sequel, the way he described it to me, elevates the movie from being a horror movie – and I wouldn’t even say it’s just a horror movie because it’s a horror, comedy, rom-com drama – into a ‘Back to the Future’ type of genre film where the sequel joins us right from where we left off, it explains a lot of things in the first one that didn’t get explained, and it elevates everything. I was really pleased to know that we weren’t just gonna be pushing all the buttons that people loved the first time, over and over again, ’cause I think that gets old.”
“I’m extremely proud of the second movie. It’s better than the first movie, it takes it further. Chris Landon got the tone right, and you’re going to love it.”
“Happy Death Day 2U” arrives in theaters on February 14, 2019.
It didn’t take long for producer Jason Blum to walk back his controversial comments about female directors: The horror hitmaker has issued an apology for his “dumb” remarks, and is pledging to make changes to Blumhouse.
Blum caused an uproar on social media on Wednesday after saying in an interview that his company had never released a woman-directed movie, because “there are not a lot of female directors period, and even less who are inclined to do horror.” Many film fans and critics begged to differ, flooding Twitter with suggestions — and also admonishing Blum for being willfully ignorant about the wealth of female talent in Hollywood.
“Thank you everyone for calling me out on my dumb comments in that interview,” the producer tweeted, going on to say that he was indeed passionate about hiring women, citing Blumhouse’s large number of female executives.
But Blum admitted that the company has “not done a good enough job working with female directors and it is not because they don’t exist.”
The producer ended his statement by pledging to “do better,” and it seems that he is intent on keeping that promise. Blum spoke with Variety at the “Halloween” premiere on Wednesday night, and said that some good had already come from the controversy.
“Today was a great day for me because I learned a lot,” the producer told the trade, “and because there are a lot of women out there that I’m going to meet as a result of today, so I’m grateful for it.”
Women in Hollywood are more than ready for the opportunity afforded by helming a Blumhouse feature. Here’s hoping Blum stays true to his word and actually makes it happen.
Chances are, you’re already a few episodes into Netflix’s “The Haunting of Hill House,” a complex, layered, very spooky horror story that the streaming giant is hoping will be the next “Stranger Things.”
But even more impressive than the overlapping time lines and abundance of well-drawn characters, is the fact that a single man wrote and directed every episode. That man’s name is Mike Flanagan and he’s a marvel. Flanagan has been a rising star in horror cinema since he made a name for himself with 2011’s shot-inside-his-Glendale-apartment sleeper hit “Absentia” (a movie that, it should be noted, is no longer available for streaming on Netflix and thusly not catalogued here). Working steadily since, he’ll finally get his big studio debut in 2020 with the release of “Doctor Sleep,” the follow-up (of sorts) to “The Shining.”
So in honor of “The Haunting of Hill House,” and in anticipation of “Doctor Sleep,” we are ranking all of Flanagan’s movies (besides “Absentia”). Happy Halloween!
5. ‘Oculus’ (2013)
Relativity
Flanagan’s “haunted mirror” movie saw the filmmaker working with an expanded scope and scale (the movie cost $5 million, cobbled together from a number of disparate entities, including Blumhouse, Relativity and, um, WWE Studios). Based upon a short film Flanagan had made almost a decade earlier, “Oculus” features an inventive structure, with two adults (played by a very charming Karen Gillan and Brenton Thwaites) dealing with the aforementioned accursed mirror, while flashing back to their earlier encounter with the object and what went down. (Flanagan would return to this bifurcated narrative for “The Haunting of Hill House.”)
It’s not that “Oculus” is bad, exactly, it’s just that it isn’t as memorable as some of his other movies. Still, he made a mirror scary, which isn’t exactly an easy feat.
4. ‘Ouija: Origin of Evil’ (2016)
Blumhouse/Universal
It’s a testament to Flanagan’s considerable talent that he made a quickie follow-up to an utterly forgettable horror movie (based on a board game, no less) feel like essential horror cinema.
The prequel, set in 1967 Los Angeles and only tenuously connected to the original film, is rich and fiery. It features a strong central performance by Elizabeth Reaser as a single mother who makes a living as a phony psychic. Of course, everything becomes very terrifyingly real thanks to the introduction of a haunted “spirit board.” Handsomely photographed and filled with a deliberately old school vibe (that title card!), “Ouija: Origin of Evil” is outstanding entertainment from start to finish and quietly advances Flanagan’s often overlooked feminist subtext.
3. ‘Hush’ (2016)
Blumhouse/Netflix
Flanagan’s “secret” project for Blumhouse, “Hush,” premiered at South by Southwest in 2016 and was on Netflix less than a month later. The story of a deaf writer (Kate Siegel, who also co-wrote the movie and is married to Flanagan), who is terrorized by a masked figure (John Gallagher, Jr.) is a single, sustained set piece stretched over a thrilling 81 minutes — and it is brilliant.
Part of it is that Siegel is such a compelling lead, always sympathetic but never a victim, and part of it is the way that Flanagan understands point-of-view, with an uncanny knack for putting the viewer inside the head of his main character. (All of these skills would come back, in even more full-blooded form, for “Gerald’s Game.”) Plus, with that brief-but-effective runtime, it’s barely longer than an average episode of a pay cable drama series; it’s all killer, no filler.
2. ‘Before I Wake’ (2016)
Netflix
Waylaid for almost two years due to the disillusion of Relativity Media and the subsequent litigation (Netflix swooped in and saved the day earlier this year), “Before I Wake” is finally out in the world and it is terrific. Less a horror movie than an incredibly spooky Amblin production, it concerns a young orphan (Jacob Tremblay) who moves in with parents who had just lost a son (Kate Bosworth and Thomas Jane). Soon, they realize that the young boy can manifest things while he dreams — including, it turns out, their dead child.
Things go from intriguingly otherworldly to downright chilling when a dark presence emerges from his nightmares (it’s pretty scary). There are a lot of surprising things about “Before I Wake,” like how nuanced the performances are and how creepy the creature is, but maybe the most shocking element is how well Flanagan and his co-writer Jeff Howard deal with the psychological implications of the mourning parents. This is a truly great film, which makes the fact that it was nearly lost all the more tragic.
1. ‘Gerald’s Game’ (2017)
Netflix
With “Gerald’s Game,” Flanagan accomplished the impossible, turning Stephen King’s beloved, but deeply “unfilmable” 1992 novel into a brilliant, totally unforgettable cinematic experience.
In “Game,” Carla Gugino plays Jessie, a woman who retreats to her secluded lake house with her somewhat sadistic husband, the titular Gerald (Bruce Greenwood) and, after a sex game gone wrong, winds up handcuffed to the bed without any chance of escape. From there, the movie gets weirder and considerably scarier, as she must contend with a mangy dog, weirdo killer, and her own unglued psyche. Flanagan does a tremendous job putting you inside Jessie’s head, as she toggles between the past and the present and all the voices telling her what to do. (Somehow, he even managed to maintain that nifty “Dolores Claiborne” reference.)
“Gerald’s Game” was also the home to one of the greatest, bloodiest and most widely dissected (on social media at least) horror movie moments of last year — the “de-gloving.”
If you don’t know what that means, just watch the movie. All will be come clear.
Nostalgia, a friend once told me, is paralysis. But moviegoers live in the era of the “legacyquel,” when filmmakers pay tribute to the franchises that inspired them by revisiting (and in some cases resurrecting) the core elements that drove their success.
After eight convoluted (and contradictory) installments in the “Halloween” series, a remake and its follow-up, director David Gordon Green has not only pulled off the unique feat of making a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s original, but in making that sense of legacy its thematic cornerstone.
In a film stuffed with callbacks for franchise fans both hardcore and casual, including a fiercely committed performance by Jamie Lee Curtis as would-be victim-turned-monster hunter Laurie Strode, “Halloween” achieves a skillful balance between dutiful homage and straightforward horror — while somehow holding a thoughtful conversation about the dangers of paying too much attention to the past.
Forty years after the “Babysitter Murders” in Haddonfield, Illinois, Michael Myers (Nick Castle) has sat, silent and secluded, in an institution for the criminally insane. By contemporary standards, Michael’s murders of just a handful of people is a regional, relatively minor crime. But it’s a defining event in the life of Laurie Strode, who has spent the intervening decades preparing for what she believes is Michael’s inevitable return. She has done so at the cost of two marriages, her possible sanity, and the custody of her daughter Karen (Judy Greer), now married with a daughter of her own, Allyson (Andi Matichak). Laurie’s fears, and long-held plans to exact revenge, are rekindled when a transport carrying Michael to a maximum-security prison crashes and he escapes.
As Halloween festivities begin, Michael quickly carves a new path of destruction across Haddonfield, while Laurie demands that Karen and her family stay with her in the forest stronghold she has spent decades building in anticipation for this very eventuality. But even as police officer Frank Hawkins (Will Patton), who was on the scene for the original 1978 murders, desperately patrols the streets with Michael’s psychiatrist, Dr. Ranbir Sartain (Haluk Bilginer), circumstances conspire to bring together Michael and Laurie in a violent, no-holds-barred confrontation forty years in the making.
Universal
Those well-acquainted with the original “Halloween” will enjoy not just this film’s references to its predecessor, both visual and narrative, but the throughline it creates with the two main characters — Michael Myers, restored to his terrifying, implacable origins, and Laurie Strode, resilient and hardened after decades of post-traumatic stress. A big part of the reason that the original film worked — other than its largely unprecedented status as a slasher film before the genre was coined — was that it established important details but didn’t try to explain too much, least of all what made Michael tick. Green, along with his co-writers Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, reveal what has transpired during the intervening years but ignore — and even make fun of — the prospect of “understanding” him any better now as he continues his murderous spree. That his monolithic evil doubles as a metaphor for unresolved trauma only deepens his relationship with Laurie, whether the two are actually fighting face-to-face or as the bogeyman she is convinced exists but the rest of the world regards with disbelief — or worse, indifference.
Unlike, say, “Halloween” remake director Rob Zombie, whose hillbilly aesthetic colors everything in his films (whether or not it’s appropriate), Green consistently and seamlessly adapts his style to the demands of the material. His reverence for Carpenter, both as writer and director, is palpable but unobtrusive, enhancing scenes with flourishes that closely resemble the elegant polish of Carpenter’s original. But the film’s underlying contention is that there is an inherent danger in fetishizing the past — certainly built into Laurie’s self-destructive pursuit of vengeance — but also in the concentric circles of Dr. Sartain, consumed with curiosity about what goes on in Michael’s head.
It’s also there in regard to the investigative reporters who commemorate the anniversary of Michael’s killing spree by poring over the minutiae of the lives wrecked or ended in its wake. It’s a difficult task to try and live up to an iconic film like “Halloween” without purely aping its choices, but Green, McBride, and Fradley manage to pull it off — effectively enough, anyway, for this to feel fresh and exciting.
Of course, if your experience with Michael Myers amounts to little more than “he was a guy with a mask who murdered people,” this sequel provides more set up than you’ll possibly need, and still exerts an impact; it’s probably the best flat-out slasher film in decades, certainly of those released by a major studio. Led by Curtis, who swaddles herself in Strode’s worldview like a warm, ever-constricting blanket, the performances are uniformly excellent. Every characterization oozes an awareness of what tropes cannot quite work now in the way they worked back then — certainly with regard to victimization, both literal and thematic — even as it acknowledges that, well, there have to be victims when there’s a masked murderer. There’s something profound and thrilling about Laurie being the throat-clearing, final “Final Girl,” a characterization that doubles as a gauntlet thrown down for the genre as a whole to reflect upon itself, and do better going forward.
Ultimately, “Halloween” does quite beautiful justice to the legacy of its characters — and to the franchise — because it allows audiences to live in that past, but crucially encourages them to focus on the future.
Welcome to Fantasy Island! Because everything else has already been remade and it was next on the list.
“Fantasy Island” — the TV series that ran on ABC from 1977-1984, and spawned “De plane! De plane!” — is being turned into a movie.
According to Deadline, Blumhouse (“Halloween,” “Glass”) is co-financing the film with Sony, with Jeff Wadlow directing and co-writing the script. That will mark a re-team of Wadlow and Blumhouse after “Truth Or Dare.”
The TV series starred Ricardo Montalban as Mr. Roarke, overseer of a magical island attracting visitors who hope to live out their wildest fantasies. Hervé Villechaize co-starred as Mr. Roarke’s sidekick Tattoo.
So it’s another remake. But it has been a long time since the TV show (and two TV movies) aired, and the premise is interesting enough to be ripe for a modern feature-length re-interpretation.
This could really work. Or it could suck. We’ll see. Casting will be a big factor, in addition to the direction they decide to take with the plot and tone. Horror? Horror-comedy? It’s Blumhouse, so you have to expect dark indie horror is ahead.
Taking a cue from cult classic “Clue,” the upcoming sequel “Unfriended: Dark Web” is reportedly screening two different endings to the film in different theaters.
Bloody Disgusting noticed the phenomenon last week on Twitter, where a note to film projectionists from the distributor was shared. The sheet features a special bit of instruction for those screening “Dark Web.”
In a really weird turn of events, Unfriended: Dark Web will have not one but two separate endings in theaters. pic.twitter.com/jqaqHmqYAZ
In bold, all-caps type is this declaration: “PLEASE NOTE THIS FEATURE HAS TWO DIFFERENT ENDINGS.” The instructions go on to state that the version of the film featuring Ending 1 clocks in at 1:32:22, while the version with Ending 2 runs 1:31:55.
This week, a different Twitter user seemingly confirmed that there are two versions being screened, pointing to a screen shot he said came from a ticketing app.
In the image, there are two “Unfriended: Dark Web” offerings: One with Ending A, one with Ending B.
As Slash Film notes, “Clue” famously screened three different endings in theaters in 1985 (rather than today’s tactic of tacking on alternate scenes on the home release, or as bonus content), causing a stir among fans and critics alike. That move ultimately secured the film’s legacy as a beloved cult classic.
We can’t know for sure if this stunt will help “Unfriended: Dark Web” achieve similar status, but at the very least, it should ensure that loyalists will see the flick at least twice in theaters. Pretty genius tactic.
