Movies
After Dark Originals: ’51’ Finds a Director, New Details on ‘Banshee’
An update to After Dark Films and SyFy’s announcement regarding their Saturday night creature features airing in 2011 (after going theatrical in After Dark Originals this fall). The first After Dark-Syfy co-production is Scream of the Banshee, starring Lauren Holly and Lance Henriksen. The film, directed by Steven C. Miller, follows Holly as an archeology professor who unearths a dangerous artifact, unwittingly releasing a creature that is able to kill with the power of its bone-splitting scream. The other creature feature, 51, puts Jason Connery (The Devil’s Tomb) in the director’s chair. The pic chronicles what happens after political pressure from the American public forces the Air Force to decide to allow a select few well-known reporters limited access to the most secretive base on the planet: Area 51. But when one of the base’s hidden “long term visitors” exploits this unprecedented visit as a chance to liberate himself and his fellow alien captives, Area 51 turns from a secure government base to a horrifying destination of terror.
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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