Movies
Chiller Reveals “Slasher,” ‘Lifeforce’ and ‘Siren’ (Based On the ‘V/H/S’ Segment “Amateur Night”)
“I like you…”
On the heels of its most-watched original movie to date (Animal) and the SXSW 2015 premiere of its original movie The Boy, Chiller announces new original content for 2015 and 2016, including its first-ever original series, “Slasher,” and two new original movies, Lifeforce and Siren.
In Siren, a bachelor party becomes a savage fight for survival when the groomsmen unwittingly unleash a fabled predator upon the festivities. Slated to premiere on Chiller in 2016, Siren, written by Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski, is a non-foound-footage adaptation/spinoff to David Bruckner’s short film “Amateur Night,” one of the segments featured in the 2012 Sundance premiere of the anthology thriller V/H/S.
Chiller’s first original series, “Slasher,” follows the plight of a young woman who returns to the small town where she was born, only to find herself the centerpiece in a series of horrifying copycat murders – based on the widely-known, grisly killings of her parents. The eight-part season serves as the first instalment of an anthology series, where each season exists as a self-contained hybrid of the slasher subgenre of horror films and the traditional murder mystery. Over the course of the “Slasher” series, a variety of mysteries will unfold, building towards a climactic finale.
Developed and produced by Shaftesbury in association with Chiller and Super Channel and distributed by Content, “Slasher” is written and created by Aaron Martin (“Killjoys,” “Degrassi: The Next Generation”) and directed by Craig David Wallace (“Todd and the Book of Pure Evil”). Christina Jennings and Scott Garvie are executive producers. Funded with the participation of the COGECO Program Development and Northern Ontario Heritage Funds, Slasher will commence production in Sudbury this summer. Canadian broadcaster is Super Channel. “Slasher” will premiere on Chiller in late 2015.
Lifeforce, a reimagining of the 1985 classic film (based on Colin Wilson’s novel “The Space Vampires”), follows a group of astronauts who encounter a derelict alien spacecraft hiding an ancient secret. At the vessel, the explorers discover three perfect humanoids who are returned to Earth… and unleash a terrible plague upon the planet. The original film, starring Steve Railsback, Patrick Stewart and Mathilda May, was directed by Tobe Hooper. Lifeforce will premiere on Chiller in late 2015.
Steve B. Harris (Friday the 13th, Amityville: The Awakening) will produce for Diversion3 (www.diversion3.com) along with Mark Altman (Castle, Necessary Roughness) Mark Gottwald (DOA: Dead or Alive) and David E. Williams (Femme Fatales) from a story by Harris, Altman and Steve Kriozere (NCIS, Castle).
Universal has been having a hell of a time getting their Universal Monsters brand back on a better path in the wake of the Dark Universe collapsing, with four movies thus far released in the years since The Mummy attempted to get that interconnected universe off the ground.
First was Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, to date the only post-Mummy hit for the Universal Monsters, followed by The Last Voyage of the Demeter, Renfield, and now Abigail. The latter three films have attempted to bring Dracula back to the screen in fresh ways, but both Demeter and Renfield severely underperformed at the box office. And while Abigail is a far better vampire movie than those two, it’s unfortunately also struggling to turn a profit.
Where does the Universal Monsters brand go from here? The good news is that Universal and Blumhouse have once again enlisted the help of Leigh Whannell for their upcoming Wolf Man reboot, which is howling its way into theaters in January 2025. This is good news, of course, because Whannell’s Invisible Man was the best – and certainly most profitable – of the post-Dark Universe movies that Universal has been able to conjure up. The film ended its worldwide run with $144 million back in 2020, a massive win considering the $7 million budget.
Given the film was such a success, you may wondering why The Invisible Man 2 hasn’t come along in these past four years. But the wait for that sequel may be coming to an end.
Speaking with the Happy Sad Confused podcast this week, The Invisible Man star Elisabeth Moss notes that she feels “very good” about the sequel’s development at this point in time.
“Blumhouse and my production company [Love & Squalor Pictures]… we are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” Moss updates this week. “And I feel very good about it.”
She adds, “We are very much intent on continuing that story.”
At the end of the 2020 movie, Elisabeth Moss’s heroine Cecilia Kass uses her stalker’s high-tech invisibility suit to kill him, now in possession of the technology that ruined her life.
Stay tuned for more on The Invisible Man 2 as we learn it.
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