Movies
Josh Stolberg on ‘Piranha’ and ‘Sorority Row’, ‘Man-Witch’ a Go?!
Screenwriter Josh Stolberg has updated his official blog with a whole bunch of goodies, all horror related. While he provides some insight into the now filming Piranha 3D and the forthcoming Sorority Row, he also revealed the news that his long-gestured Warner Bros. project Man-Witch is a go! Read on for the skinny.
From Josh Stolberg’s official blog:
“I know, I know, I know, I know, I know…
I’ve been gone a while. I’ve received quite a few emails (which I haven’t replied to) and a bunch of IM’s (which I have rudely ignored). I’m sorry. Things have been incredibly busy as of late. I am hoping to start up my regular blog postings again. At least once a week for a while.
What’s new?
Sorority Row is PICTURE LOCKED!!! Very exciting. I’ve seen several screenings in the past two months and it’s gotten better and better. This last screening was great. I have high hopes for the movie. It’s everything I was hoping it would be. Scary. Funny. Tense. Stylish. Bloody. Sexy. I really think Stewart Hendler did a fantastic job with the directing. And after having a few movies made where I don’t feel real ownership over the script, this is one that I really feel came out how Pete and I wrote it. There were certainly many, many, many hands helping to make it better, but for the first time I feel like my script is represented fully and completely.
Pete and went out to Lake Havasu last week to spend some time on the Piranha set. It was a blast!!! I’ve seen a bunch of photos floating around on the internet from the shoot and it was as fun as it looks. Check out this link to see one of the first days we were there. That’s Kelly Brook and Riley Steele re-enacting a Girls Gone Wild shoot on the deck of a boat. Fun. We were able to meet and chat with most of the cast — unfortunately, we missed Richard Dreyfuss, but we met and hung out with Elisabeth Shue, Jessica Szohr, Jerr O’Connell, Ving Rhames, Adam Scott, Kelly Brook, Steven McQueen, Riley Steele and Cody Longo. More impressively, we got to hang out with Alex Aja, who I think is one of the best horror directors working today. High Tension was an amazing film and from what I saw on the set, he’s doing a really amazing job with Piranha. The film is going to be HUGE. One a couple of the days we were there, there were literally like 600 extras in bikinis and dozens of boats and cranes and scuba divers trampolines in the water. It was sick!!! So exciting to see it all come to life (especially considering that we finished the first draft of the script over five years ago). We also hung out with Alex’s producing partners Alix Taylor and Gregory Levasseur, two great folks who really made us feel welcome. All in all, it was a fun trip. We even spent an afternoon jet-skiing to one of the remote locations to see some of the second unit stuff getting shot in an amazing cove. So cool.
This week I’m on deadline to finish up with our final draft of The Spellman Files. As I think I’ve mentioned before, Barry Sonnenfeld is attached to direct and Paramount seems really gung-ho to get it greenlit. Our drafts have slowly been getting fewer and fewer notes from Barry, the studio, and our producers at Laura Ziskin Productions. That’s always a good sign. I think we’ll be turning in the draft to the studio this week.
Lastly, it’s looking like Man-Witch is a go at Warner Bros. I can’t say much about it at this point because the casting hasn’t been officially announced but it’s looking really, really good. More on that on an upcoming post.
I’m really sorry about the long delays since the last post. But check in soon and I’ll be posting more Q&As from my stockpiled email folders and also be answering some other longer questions that I’ve been getting about writing for television, some old Kids in America questions that have been in the hopper for a while, as well and a few more guest blogs and other fun stuff.
Be well and talk soon.
Josh“
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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