Oh, man, did I love Deathgasm. Jason Lei Howden‘s film was grotesque in all the right ways, making us squirm while also having a great time doing so. He gets how to pull on the audience’s strings. I’ve been dying to see what he’s going to do next, and ahead of Cannes we have an answer. He’s going to be directing Daniel Radcliffe in Occupant Entertainment’s action comedy Guns Akimbo, Deadline reports.
Penned by Howden, the story follows Miles who spends his days in a dead-end job, pining for his beautiful ex-girlfriend Nova. His mundane existence is turned upside-down when he finds himself enrolled on a dark net website that forces complete strangers to fight in a city-wide game of death so that their gladiatorial battles can be live-streamed worldwide to a fanatical audience.
The story sounds like another in the vein of Battle Royale, with James Gunn and Greg McLean’s Belko Experiment offering a similar tale. It appears that Trump’s America is really starting to inspire heavy social commentary in film, which was preluded in the Purge films. With Deathgasm on Howden’s resume, it’s hard to imagine this being anything but gory as fuck.
There are more story details:
Contestants are chosen by a clandestine gang known as Schism, who handicap the weaker contestant to further stack the odds against them. Initially, Miles’ lifetime of running from his problems pays off as he manages to elude his first opponent but when Nova is kidnapped, he must finally stop running and overcome his fears to fight for the girl he loves.
Radcliffe has become a genre sensation starring in everything from Harry Potter to Horns, The Woman in Black, Victor Frankenstein and more recently Swiss Army Man.
Joe Neuraurter and Felipe Marino are producing for Occupant while Hyperion Entertainment’s Michael Mailis and Altitude Films’ Will Clarke and Andy Mayson are exec producing.
Occupant’s Neurauter and Marino include Corin Hardy’s The Hallow, Better Living Through Chemistry and All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. Altitude’s recent credits include The Girl With All the Gifts, 47 Meters Down and Ghost Stories.
