Movies
Kevin Munroe to Write and Direct ‘El Zombo’
Death Ray and Maya Partner are teaming up to bring the Dark Horse Comic El Zombo to the big screen. As previously reported here at Bloody-Disgusting, Kevin Munroe (TMNT) will write and direct with Chris Patton and Robert Sanchez producing. Beyond the break you can read the official press release, check out the early teaser art being used for the adaptation and read our exclusive interview with Munroe, who talks a but about his plans for the project.
Hollywood, CA. Jan. 26 – Death Ray Films and Maya Entertainment team up to bring the acclaimed Dark Horse comic book El Zombo Fantasma to the big screen.
El Zombo Fantasma, published by Dark Horse Comics in 2005, created by David Wilkins and Kevin Munroe, will be produced under the Death Ray Films banner recently formed by Chris Patton, Kevin Munroe and Robert Sanchez who are currently in production on War Monkeys.
The story follows the mysterious murder of the world’s most notorious Mexican wrestler who bargains his way out of an eternity of fiery damnation by returning to Los Angeles to play guardian angel to a troublesome teen, Belisa Montoya. He soon discovers that the teen is not what she seems and that their fates have been intertwined for centuries.
Death Ray Films and Maya Entertainment will bring tales of the undead masked wrestler to multiple mediums starting with the live action feature followed by a new animated series.
Kevin Munroe will write and direct with Chris Patton and Robert Sanchez producing. Wilkins and Munroe will co-produce. Mike Richardson will executive produce for Dark Horse Entertainment.
Jose Martinez and Kellvin Chavez will produce along with Academy Award nominee Moctesuma Esparza who will executive produce for Maya Entertainment.
“Zombo started years ago as just a geeky idea between two friends who worked at the same video game company,” says Munroe. “But Dave and I always knew that the property had a broader appeal than just its publishing roots, and now we’ll see it finally reach an entirely new audience. I’m thrilled to be a part of creating this new breed of superhero for the big screen.”
“As a Cuban-American in this industry, I see El Zombo as a unique property that will not only showcase Latinos but also appeal to all audiences. It has action, romance, redemption and wrestling, it’s a Latin Hellboy,” says Robert Sanchez. “It’s the prefect date movie!”
“El Zombo is an extremely cool superhero and it’s tremendous, pile-driving fun,” says Kellvin Chavez. “As a fan of wrestling, I used to watch ‘Santo, el Enmascarado de Plata’ one of the most famous Mexican free wrestlers, so I was excited by this project.”
David Wilkins and Kevin Munroe’s EL ZOMBO FANTASMA is coming to the big screen in a new live action feature from Death Ray Films and Maya Entertainment. Munroe will write and direct the project while Chris Patton and Robert Sanchez will produce. The live action feature will be followed by an animated series.
For those unfamiliar with the Dark Horse Comic, the story is about a famous Mexican wrestler mysteriously murdered and and sent into purgatory. He makes a bargain to avoid damnation by returning to Los Angeles as the guardian to a troubled teen, but the girl holds a key secret the luchador will soon discover.
Bloody-Disgusting spoke exclusively with Munroe today to shed some light on the newly announced EL ZOMBO movie.
Bloody-Disgusting: Tell me a little background on how this project came together, from the comic to these new live action and animated projects.
Kevin Munroe: I worked at Midway games in San Diego. Dave Wilkins was another artist there and we became friends. We started goofing around about doing a comic together and he had this drawing of Zombo. We started bouncing around ideas about this guy becoming a guardian angel and we kind of liked it. This was 2001 or 2002. We met with Mike Richardson and he loved it and he said, “Let’s do it.” His only note was to change him from green to purple because green looks like THE MASK.
We did the three-part mini and it was really well received. We tried to get [a movie] set up at that point. Some people got it and some people didn’t. Then just recently, after Robert and Chris and I started Death Ray, one of our first meetings with Maya we were talking about all the projects we wanted to do and El Zombo came up and they flipped out about it. They really wanted a franchise and their heart was in the right place. We started talking about it and now here we are.
BD: How daunting a task is it to picture transitioning EL ZOMBO from the page to live action?
KM: It’s not for me so much because I created it with Dave. This is always what I had seen. The comic book was always the best that we could get on paper to do it. To me now it’s basically trying to put movement and staging and going to the next world with that. It’s a little bit of a tricky project because you either will make it so realistic that it loses all of its spark or it could be done so goofy that no one will ever take it seriously. I guess you could say it’s the HELLBOY treatment that once you’ve established that reality specific to that world, that’s when you can start introducing all these supernatural elements and the idea of whether or not Zombo is just going to be a really big guy or a wrestler or somebody in an augmented suit. People will buy that if you’ve done it right and that’s something that Guillermo [del Toro] does so perfectly.
BD: I know it’s early to talk casting, but you must have an idea of who the perfect person is for Zombo. If you are looking for someone that you don’t have to augment with a suit or makeup or CG, your choices are pretty limited.
KM: I know, it’s rough. CG’s not bad. I’m kind of interested in CG, but because of DEAD OF NIGHT pro-prosthetic right now. There’s something about it right now that’s so cool and convincing. You look at the winged creature in HELLBOY II and that thing is near perfection. I would love to do a test. And ther are a handful of guys that could probably pull off that role.
BD: The Rock?
KM: Yeah, The Rock is the first one right. But then it’s like, is The Rock ever going to do a wrestling movie? Probably not. There are guys Baptista in the WWE or something. He’s a big guy and he looks really cool. It’s funny, because we’re talking to a couple of the wrestlers now for DEAD OF NIGHT and I’ve done a few projects with the WWE and I’ve found that those guys are some of the best performers. They probably run circles around half the actors that pop up on the big screen. They go on stage every night in front of thousands of people and they play on that stage.
BD: Aside from Zombo, any ideas of who your dream cast would be?
KM: A little bit, but it’s probably premature to say because I’ll jinx it. I’m still writing the script, so we’ll do that and budget it out and see where we stand and go from there.
BD: What would your involvement be on the animated series?
KM: I would love to be as involved as possible because it’s a big part of my background. I would love for Dave Wilkins to get in there and be involved artistically because he’s kind of the Mike Mignola of that world. We’re talking about that and direct-to-DVD animated stuff as well. It’s fun and I’d like to be involved as much as possible.
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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