Movies
UPDATE: ‘Piranha 3DD’s’ Release In Question As UK Dumps Sequel Direct-To-Disc
Update: Having spoke with people involved with the film, Dimension U.S. fully owns Piranha 3DD and will be the first to release it (potentially spring 2012) worldwide. Other markets will follow. Thus, the following story is bunk.
According to the British Video Association, Dimension Films’ Piranha 3DD, the sequel to the remake that reteams Feast director John Gulager with writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, has been pulled from its UK theatrical slot and instead will be dumped direct-to-disc on March 9, 2012. While the news is being downplayed on other websites, this definitely has repercussions here in the States. In other words, if Dimension Films is to release Stateside, it’ll need to be in theaters before March 9.
This sounds a bit fishy. More news as it comes in; until then, inside you’ll find the UK synopsis for the flick starring Danielle Panabaker, Matt Bush, Chris Zylka, David Koechner, Meagan Tandy, Paul James Jordan, Jean-Luc Bilodeau, Hector Jimenez, Adrian Martinez, Clu Gulager, Gary Busey, Katrina Bowden, Christopher Lloyd, Ving Rhames, Paul Scheer, and even David Hasselhoff.“Horror sequel in which a species of violent prehistoric piranha continue to terrify a small town. The chaos unleashed in ‘Piranha’ (2010) by a group of the omnivorous fish, set free by an earthquake that split the floor of a lake, may only have been the beginning. The tests of marine biologist Carl Goodman (Christopher Lloyd) indicate that these fish were only adolescents, suggesting their parents would be even fiercer adversaries. When the piranha make their way into the town’s plumbing system, the terror spreads. Soon swimming pools and even the town’s brand new waterpark are infested by the bloodthirsty critters. Can the town’s residents, marshalled by survivor of the first movie Deputy Fallon (Ving Rhames), find a way to combat their sharp-teethed tormentors?”
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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