Movies
The ‘Cirque du Freak’ Comes to Town in 2010
Can you say yikes? Universal Pictures’ adaptation of the children’s horror novel, Cirque du Freak, has been finished for quite some time now — and yet the film isn’t set to hit theaters until 2010. Today a January 15, 2010 release was announced for the Paul Weitz directed pic that follows John C. Reilly who plays a vampire who drafts a 14-year old to serve as his assistant. The youth is turned into a half-vampire and becomes the catalyst in a battle between vampires and the rival Vampanese. The studio bought rights in 2005 to a series of 12 books, none of which will be made if this first adaptation flops.
Filming is underway in New Jersey on Parker Finn’s remake of Andrzej Żuławski’s 1981 psychological horror movie Possession, and Deadline reports that three new faces have joined the cast.
Madeline Brewer (Cam, “You”), Emory Cohen (Sweetheart, Lords of Chaos), and Nicholas Alexander Chavez (“Grotesquerie“) have joined previously announced cast members Margaret Qualley, Callum Turner, Diego Calva, and Paul Dano.
Parker Finn is writing, directing and producing the new take on Possession.
Just how closely Finn’s update will follow the 1981 cult classic remains to be seen, but the original film starred Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill as married couple Anna and Mark in Cold War-era West Berlin whose relationship spirals into a supernatural nightmare. Suspicions of infidelity soon give way to something much more sinister.
Isabelle Adjani’s unforgettable performance, particularly the infamous subway sequence that remains one of horror’s most iconic scenes, helped catapult the 1981 film into cult masterpiece status and remains influential, even as recent as Nell Tiger Free’s turn in The First Omen.
Adjani previously gave the remake, and Qualley’s casting in particular, her blessing.
Producers include Jonathan Fass, Roy Lee, Andrew Childs, and Robert Pattinson. Marc Bienstock will executive produce.