Movies
Rob Lowe is Directing and Starring In a Remake of ‘The Bad Seed’ for Lifetime
Rob Lowe is set to direct and star in a remake of the classic 1956 Oscar-nominated thriller The Bad Seed for Lifetime, writes Deadline.
Lowe will play the father of a young daughter who is the personification of evil.
The parent’s gender is being switched from the ‘56 feature version, where it was played by Nancy Kelly, as well as from the book and play the movie was based on. Kelly received an Oscar nomination, as did Patty McCormack for her role as the young daughter.
The reimagining of the cult 1956 psychological horror film is penned by Barbara Marshall (Wish Upon) based on a best-selling novel by William March that was adapted to a long-running Broadway play.
“Lowe will star as a father who seems to have everything under control. But when a terrible tragedy takes place at his daughter Emma’s school, he is forced to question everything he thought he knew about his beloved girl. He slowly begins to question if Emma’s exemplary behavior is just a façade and whether she played a role in the horrific incident. When more strange things begin to happen, he’s faced with keeping a terrible secret to protect Emma, but ultimately must stop her from striking again.”
The project is currently in negotiations with Warner Bros., which owns the rights to the title.
Lowe, The Wolper Organization’s Mark Wolper (“Bates Motel”, “Roots”) and Elizabeth Stephen executive produce. Preliminary casting is underway with production eying an early 2018 start.
It’s been eight years since Ari Aster came onto the scene and helped usher in a new wave of horror with Hereditary, one of the rare horror movies from the past ten years that still seems to come up in conversation every single week. And it’s back in the conversation this week, with Ari Aster revealing at an event that he’s already written a prequel to Hereditary!
Ari Aster was on hand at the American Cinematheque for Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair last week, a Los Angeles festival that screened all of Aster’s movies to date. The website Gold Derby reports that Aster revealed the Hereditary prequel script during a Q&A at the event, and you can watch the full Q&A conversation below for confirmation on the website’s report.
“I wrote a prequel to this,” Aster told the crowd, referring to Hereditary. “It never feels like the right time to do it. It’s a prequel, not a sequel so I don’t know where this goes.”
Would a potential Hereditary prequel dig deeper into the mythology of demon king Paimon? Unfortunately, Aster provides no further details on his prequel approach at this time.
Aster said of Hereditary during the same Q&A, “I was just trying to make a really good horror movie.” I think most horror fans would agree that he more than accomplished that goal, and the past eight years have proven that Hereditary is an enduring classic of its generation.
We celebrated the fifth anniversary of Hereditary here on BD back in 2023.
Ron Breton wrote, “Hereditary offers a similar emotional resonance to this new generation of horror – my generation of horror– as movie-goers in the seventies when they first saw Exorcist. Much like Aster’s film, we see the incomprehensible evil wear the face of a young girl; the victim of a raw deal she had no say in, as it tears a family to its core. Sure, both films offer so many terrifying visuals that can make the hair stand up on anyone’s neck – but it also depicts intense relationships and emotions that are tangible. Real. Familiar.”
“In that familiarity lies the uncanny, ready to rear its ugly head and force us to confront thoughts and horrors laying dormant and clawing at our psyche,” Breton continued his 5th anniversary celebration of Hereditary. “And it doesn’t matter if it’s been five or fifty years. These horrors are always there, as we become pawns in its horrible, hopeless machine.”
Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Ann Dowd, and Milly Shapiro star in Hereditary. In the film, “A grieving family is haunted by tragic and disturbing occurrences.”
That’s putting it mildly, eh?!
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