Movies
Dark Castle Heads to the ‘Dark Moon’
There are a lot of problems circling multiple “found footage” projects, only this one appears to have a happy ending, so says Heat Vision. Over the weekend, the Weinstein Co. announced that it had boarded the Timur Bekmambetov-produced Apollo 18 and would release the low-budget sci-fi thriller in March. In the wake of that, on Tuesday, Roland Emmerich pulled the plug on The Zone, another “found footage” project that was to have started shooting next week. The site reports that yet another project was shelved — but this time Dark Castle is in negotiating to pick it up in turnaround. Read on all about Dark Moon, from the director of The Fourth Kind.
Here’s the backstory: In mid-October, Warner Bros. picked up Dark Moon, a spec script written by Olatunde Osunsanmi, for Akiva Goldsman to produce via his Weed Road shingle. Osunsanmi was also on board to direct the movie, which is in the “found footage” genre.
The genre’s conceit is that the footage purports to be genuine reels, tapes or files found after the person operating the camera expires or disappears. Alien invasion flick Cloverfield kicked off the recent trend, which also encompasses the hugely successful Paranormal Activity movies.
Like Apollo 18, Moon is based on the idea that NASA’s manned moon missions did not stop with Apollo 17. Moon follows a black ops mission sent to explore previously classified lunar discoveries.
But when Warners execs learned Sunday of TWC and Bekmambetov’s project, they got nervous. On Monday, a top Warners exec made calls to the Moon men to tell them their mission was grounded (put in turnaround).
Enter Dark Castle’s Andrew Rona and Alex Heineman. The execs at Joel Silver’s Warners-based genre shingle had read the Moon script and were fans. On Tuesday they brought it to Silver, who liked what he read and authorized the company to pick Moon up.
Negotiations are still ongoing, but Moon will now be financed and made by Dark Castle, with Weed Road still on board as a producer. The project will shoot this winter — ironically, for distribution next year via Warners, as per Dark Castle’s output deal with the studio.
After pulling in $28 million at the worldwide box office this month, director (and star) Dev Patel’s critically acclaimed action-thriller Monkey Man is now available to watch at home.
You can rent Monkey Man for $19.99 or digitally purchase the film for $24.99!
Monkey Man is currently 88% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, with Bloody Disgusting’s head critic Meagan Navarro awarding the film 4.5/5 stars in her review out of SXSW back in March.
Meagan raves, “While the violence onscreen is palpable and painful, it’s not just the exquisite fight choreography and thrilling action set pieces that set Monkey Man apart but also its political consciousness, unique narrative structure, and myth-making scale.”
“While Monkey Man pays tribute to all of the action genre’s greats, from the Indonesian action classics to Korean revenge cinema and even a John Wick joke or two, Dev Patel’s cultural spin and unique narrative structure leave behind all influences in the dust for new terrain,” Meagan’s review continues.
She adds, “Monkey Man presents Dev Patel as a new action hero, a tenacious underdog with a penetrating stare who bites, bludgeons, and stabs his way through bodies to gloriously bloody excess. More excitingly, the film introduces Patel as a strong visionary right out of the gate.”
Inspired by the legend of Hanuman, Monkey Man stars Patel as Kid, an anonymous young man who ekes out a meager living in an underground fight club where, night after night, wearing a gorilla mask, he is beaten bloody by more popular fighters for cash. After years of suppressed rage, Kid discovers a way to infiltrate the enclave of the city’s sinister elite. As his childhood trauma boils over, his mysteriously scarred hands unleash an explosive campaign of retribution to settle the score with the men who took everything from him.
Monkey Man is produced by Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions.
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