Movies
Bertino Returns to Write ‘Strangers’ Sequel
We broke the news exclusively here on B-D Back in June that Rogue Pictures was planning a sequel to their summer smash-hit, The Strangers, which racked in over $50 million here in the States. Today the news became official as Rogue has tapped Bryan Bertino to return to write the script. Bertino wrote and directed the first film. Read on for the full story.
Bertino wrote the original and made his directing debut on the film; it’s yet to be determined whether he’ll helm the sequel.
The expectation is that Liv Tyler, along with several of the original villains, will return. Production is being slated for early 2009.
“Strangers” became Rogue’s first breakout hit, and the genre division of Focus Features is approaching the sequel as a franchise that could have the legs of “Saw” or “Scream.”
Budgeted at $9 million, the film grossed $54 million domestically in a highly competitive summer release slot. It has just begun an international rollout that expands to the U.K. this Friday.
Like the original, the sequel will be a co-production of Vertigo Entertainment and Mandate Pictures, with Doug Davison, Roy Lee and Nathan Kahane producing. Rogue is co-financing along with Intrepid Pictures, whose principals, Marc D. Evans and Trevor Macy, will be exec producers.
Bertino is also scripting to direct Black, a character-driven thriller with supernatural elements, and is rewriting to direct the thriller Alone. Both are for Rogue.
Two things that have proven to be pretty dependable at the box office in recent years are horror movies and Christopher Nolan movies. With Nolan’s The Odyssey absolutely dominating the box office this past weekend, many fans of Nolan’s work have been left hungry for a Nolan-directed horror movie. After all, The Odyssey does whet the appetite for Nolan nightmare fuel.
Christopher Nolan has brushed up against the horror genre in the past with 2002 thriller Insomnia, but does he have any interest in someday making a full-on horror movie?
Nolan tells the Empire Podcast in a new chat, “I’ve always been interested in doing a horror film.”
“But horror is most successful when the conceptual framework of whatever the story is is just so undeniable. I think there are very few really great horror movies,” Nolan continues.
So why hasn’t Christopher Nolan directed a horror movie yet?
He explains to Empire, “I’ve never clicked with a particular idea or concept that worked for me. I love the genre. Of all genres, it’s the most visceral. Where the direct response to the audience is the most important. That is to say, you’re trying to make people literally feel something in their bones about what’s going on on-screen.”
Nolan calls horror “a genre in which experimentation is demanded.” He explains, “I go to see a lot of horror films with my kids these days, and you’ll see things in the first half an hour, 45 minutes of any horror film that you’d never see in another genre. Risks that are taken. Dangerous approaches to things. Admittedly, a lot of movies can’t sustain that to the end. But in the horror genre, that kind of innovation is not just respected – it’s really demanded.”
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is now playing in theaters.
Cillian Murphy as Scarecrow in Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight’ (2008)
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