Movies
Solid French Production Co. Brings You ‘Section Eight’ on MySpace!
Some pretty exciting news was announced this evening via The Hollywood Reporter who writes that Paramount’s digital unit and French producer-distributor Gaumont are teaming up for an online original series that will premiere exclusively on MySpace entitled Section Eight. Gaumont has brought you the forthcoming The Broken, High Lane and the Guillermo del Toro produced Splice. Read on for the skinny.The series, titled “Section Eight,” is a supernatural thriller with a “Ten Little Indians” conceit: Characters are knocked off one by one, with viewers given clues as to who is trying to kill them and why. About 12 episodes are planned, with production set for June and the first episode likely to begin streaming in September.
Unlike past efforts from the studio’s digital group, “Eight” will attempt to create an entirely new content brand. “We’re not relying on branded talent or a well-known franchise,” Paramount Digital Entertainment president Thomas Lesinski said. “We’re trying to do online original content for the first time.”
The initiative follows in the footsteps of Paramount Digital Entertainment pushing off of existing properties with content like last year’s “Jackass 2.5,” a feature follow-up to the studio’s two hit movies showcasing the male-themed gonzo adventures.
Episodes of “Section Eight” will run between six and nine minutes, execs said, and at least one new episode will premiere each week during the run. A heavy social-networking component — viewers will be able to interact with cast as well as guess solutions to the series’ puzzles — also is planned.
Lesinski said that the episodes, which are fall in the PG-13 category, will be promoted on both MySpace and via a host of Viacom assets like MTV.
MySpace has been aggressive in the online originals space; it was the first platform to debut the Marshall Herskovitz-produced “quarterlife,” among others.
After a period of MySpace exclusivity, “Eight” will go out via other platforms, including iTunes, and also could eventually be collected as a single feature that will be distributed on DVD.
The companies are formally announcing the series Monday morning at the MIP confab in Cannes, with Endemol peddling foreign rights at the show.
About a half dozen projects are currently in development at Paramount Digital Entertainment, some of which derive from existing Par movies. But execs said they want the unit to undertake more than just online extensions of the studio’s efforts.
“I think it’s important that we start testing original content,” Lesinski said. “It allows you more flexibility, and there’s a lot more upside.“
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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