Movies
Raimi Launches Spooky Pictures with ‘The Substitute’
Sam Raimi’s genre label Ghost House is launching Spooky Pictures as a new banner that will produce thrillers for family audiences. First pic will be The Substitute, a remake of the Danish thriller that Scott Derrickson (The Exorcism of Emily Rose, The Day the Earth Stod Still) will helm and Columbia Pictures will co-finance and distribute through a first-look deal with Spooky.
Announcement follows a similar label launch by Disney, which is pairing up with Guillermo del Toro to make scary pics for family auds through Double Dare You (Daily Variety, Sept. 11), and signals the kind of thrillers Hollywood may soon be unspooling at the megaplex. Should the labels find an audience, the shift away from slasher fare and the like, often referred to as “gore porn,” is likely.
Project revolves around a terrified sixth-grade class as the students race to reveal to their parents that their new substitute teacher is an evil alien being.
Derrickson is penning the script with Paul Harris Boardman, who co-wrote “Emily Rose” with Derrickson. The two also collaborated on the redo of Fox’s “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”
Ole Bornedal originally wrote and directed “The Substitute,” which bowed in 2007.
Spooky will finance, develop and produce its own family fare under Ghost House, which has a deal with Mandate Pictures.
Raimi and Rob Tapert (“The Grudge” series and “30 Days of Night”) will serve as producers of the “Substitute” remake through Spooky, while Russell Hollander and Nathan Kahane will serve as executive producers. Tendo Nagenda and J.R. Young will shepherd for Spooky.
Pic’s original filmmakers, Bornedal and Michael Obel, will produce through their Thura Films banner.
Her Private Hell actor Diego Calva is the latest to join the cast of writer-director Parker Finn‘s remake of Andrzej Żuławski’s 1981 psychological horror movie Possession, Deadline reports today.
Calva joins previously announced cast members Margaret Qualley, Callum Turner, and Paul Dano.
Parker Finn is writing, directing and producing the new take on Possession.
No word on character or plot details yet, but the original film starred Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill as married couple Anna and Mark in Cold War-era West Berlin whose relationship spirals into a supernatural nightmare. Suspicions of infidelity soon give way to something much more sinister.
If Finn is adhering closely to the 1981 film, then Calva could be up for playing Heinrich, Anna’s lover who finds himself in way over his head with Anna and Mark’s emotional baggage.
For Possession‘s 40th anniversary, Brian Keiper captures why a remake of this particular film feels so daunting and curious: “Few movies depict emotional turmoil as effectively and daringly as Andrzej Zulawksi’s Possession. It is a challenging and sometimes inscrutable film, both for the mind and the emotions. Zulawski struggles through a number of deep issues throughout the course of the film; issues that speak to some of humanity’s deepest pains and fears. In many ways it is about loss— loss of political ideals, loss of faith, and loss of innocence. But most of all, Possession is about the fear, pain, and anger that comes from the loss of a marriage.”
Isabelle Adjani previously gave the remake, and Qualley’s casting in particular, her blessing.
Producers include Jonathan Fass, Roy Lee, Andrew Childs, and Robert Pattinson. Marc Bienstock will executive produce.