Movies
Relativity Media Officially Purchases Rogue Pictures
After more than two months of negotiations, Relativity Media has officially closed a deal to buy Rogue Pictures from Universal Pictures for roughly $150 million. The deal includes all of Rogue’s titles, most of which are horror films. You can read about the entire deal inside, especially since it concerns the future of films such as Wes Craven’s 25/8 and the long-gestured HACK/SLASH (come on already!) adaptation.
Move bolsters Relativity’s library, adding some 30 titles, including Rogue’s debut pic “Unleashed” and summer horror hit “The Strangers,” which earned $53 million. Relativity’s new assets also include more than 30 Rogue projects in various stages of development, such as a “Strangers” sequel, which has a finished script. Relativity will inherit a number of producing deals as well, including those with Wes Craven and Intrepid.
A source familiar with the deal dubbed the $150 million sale price a bargain, adding that in a better economy, the consistently profitable genre label could have fetched perhaps more than double that sum. But Universal also comes out of the deal a winner, taking a lump cash payment now and retaining a distribution stake in future Rogue films. As part of the deal, U will continue to release Rogue titles for most of the world and collect a discounted distribution fee of roughly 10%, which is less than the standard rate of 12% but more than the 8% that companies like Marvel and DreamWorks Animation pay.
The first post-sale film set for release is David Goyer’s supernatural thriller “The Unborn,” produced by Michael Bay and his Platinum Dunes shingle. Pic opens Friday.
Relativity now owns three additional Rogue pictures that are expected to bow in 2009, including Craven’s thriller “25/8,” and plans to release a minimum of two Rogue films per year each year thereafter. Relativity prexy of production Tucker Tooley and his team will oversee all future productions.
Rogue has had “success in the horror space in particular, which is something we can expand upon,” said Relativity CEO Ryan Kavanaugh. “This purchase allows us to pair our production and finance abilities alongside Universal’s extraordinary marketing and distribution team, under the umbrella of a strong and highly focused brand.”
Purchase of Rogue comes on the heels of Relativity’s massive equity partnership with Universal — signed in September — whereby Relativity will fund a substantial part of U’s slate through 2015. As part of an earlier deal between the two, Relativity put up 50% of the coin on such recent U pics as “Mamma Mia!,” “Wanted” and “American Gangster.”
Also in September, New York-based hedge fund Elliott Associates pumped $1 billion into Relativity, leaving the production and finance company with more than $2 billion on its balance sheet. Flush with cash, Kavanaugh began looking for bargains and was negotiating with Universal to purchase Rogue by late October.
“Relativity is acquiring a strong, profitable business, and we are pleased to be working with them to continue marketing and distributing Rogue films,” said U exec VP Michael Joe of the label founded in 2004 by David Linde and James Schamus. “We know Ryan and his team will continue to ensure Rogue has an opportunity to flourish.”
Other past Rogue titles include “Waist Deep,” “The Hitcher,” “Balls of Fury” and “Dave Chappelle’s Block Party.”
Though Rogue is only four years old, the label’s development coffers were fairly flush with low-risk horror material. Acquisition should be a boon for Relativity’s single-picture business, which aims to produce eight to 10 films per year but has yet to achieve that pace. Past films produced under Relativity’s one-off biz include “3:10 to Yuma,” “The Bank Job” and “The Forbidden Kingdom.” The upcoming slate includes Jim Sheridan’s “Brothers” and Lasse Hallstrom’s “Dear John,” starring Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried.
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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