Movies
News Bites: ‘REC’ Wedding, Animated ‘Monster,’ ‘Exorcist’ Play, Dracula Badass Again & First ‘House’ Pic
Click on over to the official Facebook page for Filmax’s now-filming REC 3: Genesis and you’ll find a slew of behind-the-scenes wedding photos, which is pretty much like looking through a boring wedding album. It’s hard to complain considering how awesome the first batch of stills were. Paco Plaza is behind the camera solo this time around, with Leticia Dolera and Diego Martin both starring. Watch this spot for an exclusive set report in the coming week.
The boys at /Film caught wind of a bizarre animated project from artist/director Rosto entitled The Monster of Nix, which feature the voice talents of Terry Gilliam and Tom Waits. The animated musical is about Willy, “a troubled boy who fights the destructive force of an all-devouring monster in the village of Nix.” Tom Waits voices Virgil, “a terrifying giant pitch-black swallow,” and Terry Gilliam is voicing the Ranger, “who locks himself up in terror in his forest cabin.” You’ll find a really weird teaser video inside.
Just the other day we told you about a Silence of the Lambs spoof heading to Broadway, now Los Angeles is getting one that’s more head-spinning. A John Doyle-helmed stage adaptation of The Exorcist and world preem plays by Alan Alda and Beth Henley are on tap for the 2011-12 season at L.A.’s Geffen Playhouse, writes Variety. “Agnes of God” playwright John Pielmeier adapts William Peter Blatty’s 1971 novel, also the inspiration for the famous 1973 horror pic. Production from director Doyle (“Sweeney Todd”) is slated to play July 3-Aug. 12, 2012.
It was announced last month that House of Wax and Orphan director Jaume Collet-Serra would be telling a re-imagining of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” in Harker. Details were slim as it’s said to focus on Jonathan Harker as the Scotland Yard detective who is tracking Dracula, with the script setting up the sleuth as a potential new franchise character. Collet-Serra chatted up with Spanish site Aullidos explaining their gonna make the Count nice and evil again: “[Today is all about] vampires and very romance for girls thirteen years. But we want to bring back Dracula and demonstrate who is boss.” Hell yes! Warner Bros. is behind this little fella.
Update: Image removed at request of Relativity. Lastly, check out this teaser image from Mark Tonderai’s House at the End of the Street, which “centers on a teen girl (Jennifer Lawrence) who moves with her mom to a new town and learns that their home is across the street from a house where a double murder took place. Complications ensue when the teen befriends the massacre’s sole surviving son (Max Thieriot). Elisabeth Shue costars as Lawrence’s mom.” In theaters February 3 from Relativity Media.
Universal has been having a hell of a time getting their Universal Monsters brand back on a better path in the wake of the Dark Universe collapsing, with four movies thus far released in the years since The Mummy attempted to get that interconnected universe off the ground.
First was Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, to date the only post-Mummy hit for the Universal Monsters, followed by The Last Voyage of the Demeter, Renfield, and now Abigail. The latter three films have attempted to bring Dracula back to the screen in fresh ways, but both Demeter and Renfield severely underperformed at the box office. And while Abigail is a far better vampire movie than those two, it’s unfortunately also struggling to turn a profit.
Where does the Universal Monsters brand go from here? The good news is that Universal and Blumhouse have once again enlisted the help of Leigh Whannell for their upcoming Wolf Man reboot, which is howling its way into theaters in January 2025. This is good news, of course, because Whannell’s Invisible Man was the best – and certainly most profitable – of the post-Dark Universe movies that Universal has been able to conjure up. The film ended its worldwide run with $144 million back in 2020, a massive win considering the $7 million budget.
Given the film was such a success, you may wondering why The Invisible Man 2 hasn’t come along in these past four years. But the wait for that sequel may be coming to an end.
Speaking with the Happy Sad Confused podcast this week, The Invisible Man star Elisabeth Moss notes that she feels “very good” about the sequel’s development at this point in time.
“Blumhouse and my production company [Love & Squalor Pictures]… we are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” Moss updates this week. “And I feel very good about it.”
She adds, “We are very much intent on continuing that story.”
At the end of the 2020 movie, Elisabeth Moss’s heroine Cecilia Kass uses her stalker’s high-tech invisibility suit to kill him, now in possession of the technology that ruined her life.
Stay tuned for more on The Invisible Man 2 as we learn it.
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