Movies
Screen Gems Loads ‘Viral’ Terror From Student Project
Sony Screen Gems has picked up rights to a creepy student-made short entitled Viral with the plan of spinning it into a feature, reports Heat Vision.
The pickup is a coup for Tim Shechmeister, a recent UCLA film school grad who directed the short and co-wrote it with his brother, Matt Shechmeister, as part of a thesis project. The Shechmeisters will co-write the feature and Tim would direct the big-screen version.
“The roughly 11-minute short is set in the world of cyberbullying and eventually includes supernatural elements.” In fact, the story could be described as being reminiscent of The Grudge or The Ring, but primed for the current generation that uses smart phones and Facebook as extensions of themselves.
The Grudge reference is apt because that movie’s writer, Stephen Susco, discovered the short at a screenwriting event this past summer. Tim Shechmeister, who is also a fan of Japanese horror (AKA J-Horror), gave Susco his business card with a link to the short, which the scribe checked out and loved. Susco brought it to Grudge producer Roy Lee who, along with Lawrence Grey, took it to Screen Gems. The trio will now produce. John Middleton will exec produce.
Filming is underway on The Invisible Man director Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man for Universal and Blumhouse, which will be howling its way into theaters on January 17, 2025.
Deadline reports that Matilda Firth (Disenchanted) is the latest actor to sign on, joining Christopher Abbott (Poor Things), Julia Garner (The Royal Hotel), and Sam Jaeger.
The project will mark Whannell’s second monster movie and fourth directing collaboration with Blumhouse Productions (The Invisible Man, Upgrade, Insidious: Chapter 3).
Wolf Man stars Christopher Abbott as a man whose family is being terrorized by a lethal predator.
Writers include Whannell & Corbett Tuck as well as Lauren Schuker Blum & Rebecca Angelo.
Jason Blum is producing the film. Ryan Gosling, Ken Kao, Bea Sequeira, Mel Turner and Whannell are executive producers. Wolf Man is a Blumhouse and Motel Movies production.
In the wake of the failed Dark Universe, Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man has been the only real success story for the Universal Monsters brand, which has been struggling with recent box office flops including the comedic Renfield and period horror movie The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Giving him the keys to the castle once more seems like a wise idea, to say the least.
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