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“
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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