Exclusives
UPDATE: Munroe’s Undead Wrestler ‘El Zombo’ Coming to the Big Screen
Update: Kevin Munroe talks about the project inside: During our interview with director Kevin Munroe, he revealed to Bloody-Disgusting exclusively that after filming both DEAD OF NIGHT and WAR MONKEYS he plans on developing a feature film adaptation to Dark Horse’s El Zombo series. You can read all about it inside.
“El Zombo is one of those things that I would really like to see done,” Munroe tells Bloody-Disgusting in an exclusive interview. “ It’s always been that one project that we’ve wanted to work on. It’s no one’s fault, it’s just… you need to pay rent and you don’t get to pay attention to everything. I would like to make that a priority if not by the end of this year, next.
“It’s a great story. Chris Patton, Robert Sanchez and myself are starting a new production company just for movies like this, where they feel sort of familiar, but at the same time it’s sort of a combination of all different genres,” he explains. “El Zombo is exactly that, it’s like ‘Me and my Monster’, albeit with an undead Mexican zombie. So I would love to have that movie be one of the first ones we set up, it has a real universal appeal; even amongst the sea of weirdness, there’s something really relatable to it.”
ZOMBO is the story of the unlikely friendship between a temperamental undead wrestler and an equally difficult 10-year-old girl from East L.A. Pro wrestling champ El Zombo gets a second lease on life after being unceremoniously murdered in a back alley for refusing to take a dive in the ring. His deal is to return to Earth to help Belisa Montoya – a troubled girl about to fall victim to a horrible unknown accident. Returning at first for selfish reasons of revenge, El Zombo soon finds himself at a crossroads, forced to choose between his own vengeance and saving the life of this girl he now deeply cares for. Watch this spot for more details this week.
Munroe talks a bit more about the comic, which EL ZOMBO will be adapted from.
“There are 3 issues, it came out in like 2002, 2003? It’s funny, all these Marvel and DC properties are eaten up, so you’re gonna start seeing movies based on comics that aren’t typical superhero comic stories. Even Hellboy, it’s not a regular superhero, it’s a really compelling story. There are as many comics as there are TV stations, but to John Q Public, they are just now catching on to that.”
Watch for more on this next year.
A bedtime lullaby soothes an unsettling newborn in our exclusive clip from Nightborn, from Hatching filmmaker Hanna Bergholm.
The dark fable makes its debut on Shudder on July 31.
Seidi Haarla (Compartment No. 6) and Rupert Grint (Knock at the Cabin, “Servant”) star as new parents in Nightborn, and this exclusive clip highlights mom’s harrowing transition into motherhood.
In Nightborn, “With dreams of starting a perfect family, Saga and her British husband Jon move to the isolated house where she spent much of her childhood, deep in the Finnish forest. But as soon as their baby is born, despite the reassurance of all around her, Saga knows there’s something terribly wrong with her son. As their marriage starts to crack, Jon struggles to support his wife, but only Saga suspects the terrible truth about her newborn.”
Pamela Tola, Pirkko Saisio, Rebecca Lacey and John Thomson also star.
Bergholm teased of her maternal horror movie, “In Nordic countries, there’s a long-standing mythology of trolls living in the forests. In ancient times, people truly believed that trolls inhabited the woods and had a kind of control over nature. And in Nightborn, the forest reflects Saga’s emotions and the animalistic, primitive physical side of humankind.”
“Hanna Bergholm’s audacious sophomore follow up to Hatching delivers tension and shocking moments surrounding parenthood and self discovery — with a touch of humor,” said Emily Gotto, senior vice president of acquisitions and production at Shudder. “We are thrilled to share Nightborn with audiences.”