Movies
RLJE Films Acquires Adam Egypt Mortimer’s ‘Archenemy’ for Theatrical and Digital Release in December
Daniel Isn’t Real director Adam Egypt Mortimer is back with brand new movie Archenemy, and we’ve learned today that it’s been acquired by RLJE films for release this year.
RLJE Films, a business unit of AMC Networks, has acquired the North American rights to the action/thriller ahead of its world premiere at this year’s Beyond Fest. The film marks the third collaboration between RLJE Films and SpectreVision, after Mandy and Color Out of Space. Archenemy will be released in Theaters, On Demand and Digital on December 11, 2020.
Written and directed by Adam Egypt Mortimer (Daniel Isn’t Real) from a story by Mortimer and Lucas Passmore (No Good Heroes), the film stars Joe Manganiello (“True Blood”), Skylan Brooks (“Empire”), Zolee Griggs (“W-Tang: An American Saga”), Paul Scheer (“Black Monday”), Amy Seimetz (Pet Semetary) and Glenn Howerton (“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”).
In Archenemy, Max Fist (Manganiello) claims to be a hero from another dimension who fell through time and space to Earth, where he has no powers. No one believes his stories except for a local teen named Hamster. Together, they take to the streets to wipe out the local drug syndicate and its vicious crime boss known as The Manager.
“We’re excited to be back in business with SpectreVision after the incredibly successful releases of Mandy and Color Out of Space,” said RLJE Films Chief Acquisitions Officer Mark Ward. “With Joe Manganiello’s strong performance and Adam Egypt Mortimer’s innovative direction, we couldn’t have asked for a better dream team to showcase Archenemy at Beyond Fest and in theaters and various platforms in December.”
Archenemy was produced by SpectreVision’s Daniel Noah, Lisa Whalen and Elijah Wood along with Kim Sherman, Adam Egypt Mortimer, Joe Manganiello and Nick Manganiello.
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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