Movies
The Ring Director Mutates ‘The Host’ Into a Remake
I know the lot of you think Magnolia Pictures’ Korean monster flick The Host is a masterpiece, but I’m going to stand firm in my belief that the film is not only overrated, but incredibly flawed. The idea of remaking the film sounds like a good idea to me, especially if they can find a way to differentiate it from CLOVERFIELD. We can debate this all day, but I know have a wild card in the fact that Universal Pictures just tapped the awesome Gore Verbinski (The Ring, Pirates of the Caribbean) to produce the creature feature. Read on for the skinny and share your thoughts below.
Universal Pictures and Gore Verbinski will remake the 2006 Bong Joon-ho-directed Korean thriller “The Host,” with commercials director Fredrik Bond making his feature helming debut and Mark Poirier (“Smart People”) to pen the script.
Story follows a town terrorized by a giant mutant squidlike creature hatched by toxins that flow into a nearby river from a military base. When the creature grabs a little girl, her dysfunctional family must band together to rescue her.
Verbinski will produce with Vertigo’s Roy Lee and Doug Davison, along with Paul Brooks.
The film, originally titled “Gwoemul,” did record-breaking business in its theatrical run in South Korea.
Bond has directed campaigns for Nike, Adidas and Levi’s. He and Verbinski had been looking for a project to do together, and Bond said he embraced the opportunity to mix a larger-than-life monster with a heartfelt family drama.
“It processes a few genres together, and visually it feels close to the stuff I’ve made over the last few years in commercials, the tonality of humor and the scale,” Bond said.
Verbinski set up the project through Blind Wink Prods., the company he formed at Universal, where he is developing to direct an adaptation of the vidgame “Bioshock.”
Write your own review of THE HOST
Movies
‘Werwulf’ – Focus Features Chairman Promises a Robert Eggers Horror Movie On a “Whole Other Level”
The trailer for Robert Eggers’ (The Witch, Nosferatu) new nightmare Werwulf is no doubt headed our way soon, but in the meantime we’ve got an exciting tease from Focus Features.
Focus Features chairman Peter Kujawski sat down for a new interview with Letterboxd, and he promises that Robert Eggers’ next horror movie is “on a whole other level.”
“I promise you, Werwulf is on a whole other level,” Kujawski teases. “No one has seen a movie that looks or feels like this movie does.”
“To deliver the scares that this movie does, but also deliver a really, really intimate portrait of the experience of a werewolf—the emotional experience of a man going through that curse. It’s not just a plot device for Rob. It is a question of the foundational nature of man in the world,” Kujawski continues. “That monsters can exist, and the horror of living is so felt and present in this movie, that I really think audiences are gonna respond on a whole other level when they discover what he’s made.
“Like all of his films, this has high-level terror and anxiety, but it’s done in a way that gives you these weird shafts of light and hope.”
Set in 13th century England, Werwulf sees a mysterious creature stalk the land as local folklore becomes a terrifying reality. The film hits theaters on December 25 via Focus Features.
Robert Eggers recently teased, “It’s the darkest thing I’ve ever written. By far.”
Eggers directs from a script he penned with his The Northman co-writer Sjón.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Nosferatu), Lily-Rose Depp (Nosferatu), Willem Dafoe (The Lighthouse), Ralph Ineson (The Witch), and Bodhi Rae Breathnach (Hamnet) star.