Movies
News Bites: Studios Look to Space, Pair of New Sci-Fi Projects; More ‘Walking Dead’
I’m not sure how dark this project will be so we’ll just dump it into this edition of news bites. Radar Pictures is taking the plunge into Heart of Darkness, tapping The Haunting in Connecticut‘s Peter Cornwell to direct an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novel as a space-bound sci-fi pic. Titled “Into Darkness,” script was written by Tony Giglio and thesp-turned-writer Branden Morgan. Like Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now,” the project is loosely based on Conrad’s 1902 tale of ferryboat captain Charles Marlow’s quest to return shadowy ivory trader Kurtz to civilization, reports Variety.
Deadline reports that Sony has made a deal for a new Roland Emmerich project with the working title Singularity, while also confirming the release date: May 17, 2013. Harald Kloser, who co-wrote with Emmerich the Sony-released 2012 and 10,000 BC, also co-wrote this script with Emmerich. He has been rumored to be working on a low-budget end-of-the-world thriller, maybe this is a larger version of that discarded idea?
A quick news brief that has a small bit of impact on our genre. Universal Pictures is showing interest in getting into the supernatural as they’ve inked a three-year first-look deal with Paranormal Activity and Insidious producer Jason Blum and his Blumhouse Productions. It’s nice to see the studio has intentions on making fresh horror in the coming years.
Lastly, The Walking Dead‘s writer/director/executive producer Frank Darabont is the focus on AMC’s latest online feature. In the below article he describes the splendor and horror of Season 2’s main set-piece, hints at upcoming tensions among Lori, Rick and Shane and explains why sometimes being the boss bites. New “Dispatches From the Set” are released every week throughout the production.
Q: How are the first weeks of production going?
A: Tough! It’s a very challenging show to do, and this is why it really helps to have a fantastic crew and a really great director. The time I spent on the set was reasonably minimal because I was out scouting other locations and going through a bit of prep, so there’s a lot of tromping through fields and picking ticks out of me when I got back to my room. You probably should know that the cast and crew are braving heat, humidity, ticks, every source of disgust you could imagine — all to entertain you for an hour a week. [Laughs]
Q: Last season was very urban; now you’re in the country. What kind of difference does that make?
A: Well it certainly is a great advantage because we’re gonna be dropping anchor at Hershel’s Farm for most of the season. Last season was so challenging because it was different locations pretty much every episode. Here, we’re sorta following the template of the comic book and that puts us at Hershel’s Farm for a good chunk of the season. Obviously we range out from there, but it’s a primary location for the season and that’s a terrific advantage really.
Q: Tell me about this farm you’ve found.
A: Well, it’s got the farmhouse that was built in the late 1800s, I think. It’s got such a magnificent, beautiful, Andrew-Wyeth-painting, Southern Gothic feel to it. And then it’s also got just a hint of the house from Amityville Horror or from Carrie. It’s got this wonderful blend of beauty and isolation and it’s just a little bit creepy. Georgia has just provided such magnificent locations for the show. If it were not for the unbearably insufferable heat, it would be perfection.
Q: At least with a longer production, you’ll be able to shoot in the Fall…
A: This is what I’m told. I’m told that it actually does get cool there. I don’t quite believe it. I think they might be just messing with our heads.
Q: You’ve said before that you like to treat Robert Kirkman’s comic as a road map, even as you veer off the road from time to time. What detours are you planning this season?
A: We’re fleshing out the story in so many different directions. Once you’re into this with real actors playing these characters, the dynamics develop over time from episode to episode. There’s so much rich story and character to plunder. I don’t know if we’re giving anything away, but… [SPOILER ALERT!] something as simple in the comic books as “Lori gets pregnant” winds up being sort of a fantastic complication on screen. In the story we’re telling, it’s just not that simple as it was in the comic book because you have those opportunities to really spin the story out in many different layers. So, that kind of stuff is tremendously exciting to me.
Q: You were slated to do some second-unit directing for Episode 201. What did you shoot?
A: The schedule for Episode 1 was brutally tight given the ambitious nature of that episode, so we’ve had to do more second-unit on this one than usual. I jumped in and directed a sequence involving T-Dog trying to elude a zombie in a big snarl of abandoned cars on a deserted highway. It’s a bit of cat-and-mouse in all the dead traffic, and it was terrific fun to shoot. [Special Make-Up FX Artist and Consulting Producer] Greg Nicotero has also greatly contributed as second-unit director. The teaser for Episode 1 is entirely his sequence, and it’s our version of the opening of Day of the Dead. Atlanta as it is now, a lot of walkers, a lot of quiet and solitude in the dead city. It’s a very cool visual sequence, he did a great job. Greg and I are dyed-in-the-wool horror/zombie geeks, so I know he had a blast doing it.
Q: Are you hoping to direct a full episode later this season?
A: I’m hoping to. You know, being the boss is kinda like being the kid who has to stay in and do homework. Everyone gets to play outside. Yeah, it’s hot and miserable, but my God it’s fantastic. And I’m just going, “Aww, I’ve got to go home to L.A. I’m cramming for finals, I guess. While you guys get to play zombies, I’m doing homework.”
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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