Movies
Rejoice and Celebrate the New ‘Bioshock’ Director!
True to their word, Universal Pictures has kept the wheels turning for their live-action adaptation of the popular video game Bioshock, a project that ran into some serious financial troubles that moved Gore Verbinski (The Ring, Pirates of the Caribbean) from the director’s to the producer’s chair. Who will be replacing Verbinski? How about 28 Weeks Later helmer Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, what do you guys think about that?! Read the full story and talk, talk, talk below!
“28 Weeks Later” helmer Juan Carlos Fresnadillo is in talks to direct “Bioshock,” the Universal Pictures adaptation of the Take-Two Interactive videogame.
Gore Verbinski has stepped out of the directing slot, but remains the film’s producer through his U-based Blind Wink shingle. John Logan wrote the script.
Verbinski opted out of directing because the studio’s budget plan for the film has been revamped to lense abroad in order to take advantage of tax credits and favorable exchange rates. Verbinski couldn’t commit to an overseas shoot because he is locked into directing the Paramount animated film “Rango,” with the title character voiced by his “Pirates of the Caribbean” cohort Johnny Depp.
Fresnadillo directed the 2001 Spanish thriller “Intacto,” and made his Hollywood breakthrough with “28 Weeks Later.”
With “Bioshock,” Fresnadillo is stepping into one of the highest-profile projects on the Universal roster. Verbinski came attached as director when Universal made a multimillion- dollar against gross percentage acquisition from Take-Two. Verbinski then stepped away from directing his fourth “Pirates of the Caribbean” film because he expected to be in production on “Bioshock” last spring in Los Angeles.
But Universal put on the brakes during the pre-production phase because the budget rose to $160 million and the studio needed it to cost less (Daily Variety, April 27). At the time, Universal sources vowed this would not turn into another “Halo”– U and partner Fox dropped out of that vidgame adaptation, which was to be directed by “District 9” helmer Neill Blomkamp with Peter Jackson producing. But the negotiations with Fresnadillo indicate the studio is determined to make “Bioshock” offshore.
Once it was clear Verbinski wouldn’t direct, he and the studio sparked to Fresnadillo, whose deal is contingent upon the thumbs-up from Take-Two, which maintains director approval. Fresnadillo’s producing partner, Enrique Lopez Lavigne, is in talks to become a producer.
“Bioshock” takes place in the underwater city of Rapture, where a pilot crash-lands near a secret entrance and becomes involved in a power struggle.
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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