Movies
‘King of the Hill’ Director Lands ‘Apollo 18’
Spanish-language director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego (El rey de la montana aka King of the Hill) has stepped in to replace Trevor Cawood as the helmer of the Weinstein Co.’s sci-fi “found footage” project Apollo 18. Cawood is the latest victim swept up in the space race to launch Apollo 18, which since its announcement at the American Film Market, has caused tremors in the burgeoning genre of “found footage” movies. It first caused Roland Emmerich to scrap his ultra-low budget sci-fi project The Zone, and then days later Warner Bros. dropped Dark Moon, a spec it bought concerning the Apollo moon missions to be directed in the found footage format by Olantunde Osunsanmi. Dark Castle then swept in to save it. Apollo 18 is being produced by Timur Bekmambetov and was written by Brian Miller, a winner of a screenplay contest founded by the Wanted filmmaker. The plan is to have this in theaters by March 4, 2011.
Movies
‘Desperation’ – Sam Raimi and ‘Final Destination Bloodlines’ Directors Teaming for Stephen King Movie
Stephen King’s 1996 novel Desperation is headed back to the screen, with Jeff Sneider breaking the news on The InSneider that Sam Raimi, Stephen King, and Final Destination Bloodlines directors Adam B. Stein and Zach Lipovsky are coming together for the film.
Sam Raimi will produce the upcoming Desperation movie, while Stein and Lipovsky are on board to direct. Searchlight Pictures is the studio attached to the feature film project.
Published in 1996, Stephen King’s novel Desperation was previously turned into a made-for-TV movie starring Ron Perlman, Tom Skerritt and Steven Weber back in 2006.
Wikipedia reminds, “Desperation is a story about several people who, while traveling along the desolated Highway 50 in Nevada, get abducted by Collie Entragian, the deputy of the fictional mining town of Desperation. Entragian uses various pretexts for the abductions, from an arrest for drug possession to ‘rescuing’ a family from a nonexistent gunman. It becomes clear to the captives that Entragian has been possessed by an evil being named Tak, who has control over the surrounding desert wildlife and must change hosts to keep itself alive.
“They begin to fight for their freedom, sanity and lives before realizing that if they are ever to escape Desperation, they must trap Tak in the place from which he came.”
Desperation was published at the same time as Stephen King’s own “mirror novel” titled The Regulators, which shares characters but takes place in an alternate universe.
The union of Sam Raimi and Stephen King is an exciting one for fans of both Raimi and King, and there’s a nice bit of full circle history there too. As you may recall, it was Stephen King’s review of The Evil Dead that Raimi credits for saving and legitimizing his indie debut feature.
And the rest is history! Stay tuned for more on this developing story.
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