Movies
A Bigger Boat Puts Down Payment on ‘House at the End of the Street’
Update: Title corrected. A Bigger Boat, producer Peter Block’s new company, has been making some serious headlines over the past year. With their incredible thriller Frozen opening in theaters next month, and The Ward (John Carpenter’s big return to horror) in post-production, it appears the producer behind the Saw franchise is nearly unstoppable. It was announced today that A Bigger Boat will be teaming with FilmNation Entertainment for a new psychological thriller in the vein of Psycho entitled House at the End of the Street. Read on for the skinny.
FilmNation Entertainment and A Bigger Boat are combining to finance and produce “House at the End of the Street,” a psychological thriller based on a story written by Jonathan Mostow.
The film will be directed by Mark Tonderai from a David Loucka script. Tonderai helmed “Hush,” a Pathe/IFC-distributed thriller that won a British Independent Film Award.
Pic is described as a thriller in the vein of “Psycho,” aimed at a contemporary young audience.
A Bigger Boat’s Peter Block will produce with FilmNation’s Aaron Ryder, Mostow and Hal Lieberman.
The film had been set up at Universal and developed through the discretionary fund of Mostow/Lieberman. The producers, who subsequently split up, got the picture in turnaround and set it to be co-financed by FilmNation’s Glen Basner and GreeneStreet Films, which partners with Block in A Bigger Boat.
Intention is to start production later this year. That will likely make the film the first production for FilmNation since Basner formed the venture in 2008 as an international sales arm and brought Ryder in shortly after to start a production division. Block just wrapped the John Carpenter-directed thriller “The Ward” as well as “Frozen.”
We believe this will be to ‘Psycho’ what ‘Disturbia’ was to ‘Rear Window,’ but with the addition of a strong female lead,” Ryder said.
In related news, Block has taken U.S. rights to J. Blakeson’s kidnapping thriller “The Disappearance of Alice Creed,” starring Gemma Arterton, which preemed in Toronto.
Film will be released by Anchor Bay, with whom he has a relationship.
Adrian Sturges produced and CinemaNX’s Steve Christian and Marc Samuelson were executive producers and will self-distribute in the U.K. WestEnd Films handles international sales.
Movies
Julia Garner Joins Horror Movie ‘Weapons’ from the Director of ‘Barbarian’
In addition to Leigh Whannell’s upcoming Universal Monsters movie Wolf Man, Julia Garner (The Royal Hotel) has also joined the cast of Weapons, THR has announced tonight.
Weapons is the new horror movie from New Line Cinema and director Zach Cregger (Barbarian), with Julia Garner joining the previously announced Josh Brolin (Dune 2).
The upcoming Weapons is from writer/director Zach Cregger, who will also produce alongside his Barbarian producing team: Roy Lee of Vertigo and J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules of BoulderLight Pictures. Vertigo’s Miri Yoon also produces.
The Hollywood Reporter teases, “Plot details for Weapons are being kept holstered but it is described as a multi and inter-related story horror epic that tonally is in the vein of Magnolia, the 1999 actor-crammed showcase from filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson.”
Cregger was a founding member and writer for the New York comedy troupe “The Whitest Kids U’Know,” which he started while attending The School of Visual Arts. The award-winning group’s self-titled sketch comedy show ran for five seasons on IFC-TV and Fuse. He was also a series regular on Jimmy Fallon’s NBC series “Guys with Kids” and the TBS hit series “Wrecked,” and was featured in a recurring role on the NBC series “About a Boy.”
Weapons will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures.