Movies
The Butcher Brothers Sit Back and Enjoy a ‘Black Sunset’
The Butcher Brothers (Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores) are officially horror hot as not only will their bloody mind-bender The Violent Kind premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this weekend, but the directors of The Hamiltons are gearing up for a Black Sunset, a film described as “a gory, betrayal-filled nightmare”. Read on for the skinny and read out interview with the Butcher Brothers here.
Cynthia Stafford and her Queen Nefertari Prods. are cozying up to the Butcher Bros.
The pulpy low-budget auteurs — actual names: Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores — have written and will direct the psychological horror feature “Black Sunset” for Queen Nefertari, which will package and finance. Altieri and Flores are about to let loose their latest horror exploitation effort, “The Violent Kind,” at the Sundance Film Festival, which will premiere the film Monday as part of the genre-focused Park City at Midnight section.
“Sunset” will follow seven friends on a surf trip to Mexico that turns into something that these jaunts often tend to in horror films: a gory, betrayal-filled nightmare. In “Violent Kind,” second-generation outlaw bikers retire to a secluded cabin to party only to end up on a drug-and-death bender.
Jeremy Platt and Andy Gould will produce “Black Sunset,” which is scheduled to start production in the summer. Stafford and Queen Nefertari execs Lanre Idewu and Jeff Kalligheri will be executive producers on the project.
“The project immediately piqued my interest as soon as we read the screenplay,” said Stafford, Queen Nefertari CEO. “Our goal is to build a strong slate of commercially viable feature films written and directed by smart filmmakers, and we look forward to embarking on this journey with two of the most talked about directors at Sundance.”
The Butchers, repped by Gersh and Spectacle Entertainment Group, also wrote and directed the 2006 After Dark Films release “The Hamiltons.”
Queen Nefertari, which works from a $30 million film fund repped by Gersh’s Jay Cohen, has several other projects in development: the Hollywood Farms comedy “Adrenaline,” the Hyde Park drama “Risen” and the Media 8 supernatural thriller “Undying.” The company produced the indie films “Polish Bar” and “The Gathering.”
Described as “Ted meets ET,” David Mikalson’s raunchy comedy Goblin is being brought to life over at A24, and Will Forte (“The Four Seasons”) is now in talks to star.
Deadline first reported the news this afternoon.
Kenneth Branagh has been cast to voice the titular Goblin in the upcoming A24 movie, with the character said to be “green-colored” as well as “anatomically correct.”
Skyler Gisondo (Superman) is reportedly playing the Goblin’s human best friend.
The mysterious project sounds a bit like films including A Gnome Named Gnorm and more recently, Frankie Freako, though it’s important to note that it’s not billed as a horror movie.
Deadline details, “After [Mikalson] hatched the idea to make an outrageous buddy comedy about a goblin, using a practical puppet and operating outside the Hollywood system, his script quickly got him a rep team. While others might have eyed the raunchy comedy as a writing sample or planned to wait to see the micro-budget version Mikalson has been directing in Kentucky, A24 jumped all over it. The hot indie essentially has agreed to finance a full feature.”
“There was a lot of interest, but A24 came with what Mikalson really wanted, after spending all his money crafting the puppet title character: they acquired the movie and agreed to let him make it with a significantly increased budget than what he had left after creating the anatomically correct title character,” Deadline’s report goes on to explain.
What does the titular Goblin actually look like? Well, a cake that Mikalson had whipped up for his reps might give us our first look at what to expect. Deadline explains the photo you’ll see down below, “Take a look at the cake he commissioned with Marc Gravelle at Cake Art in West Hollywood, to present to his reps as thanks for making his dream come true.”
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