Movies
‘The Gate’ Remake Gets Financed, Shoots This Summer!
After loads of loads of talk, H20 Motion Pictures has finally received financing for their forthcoming remake of The Gate, which will be shot in 3-D by actor-turned-director Alex Winter (who you might know from the Bill and Ted movies and Lost Boys. You can read the details inside. No word on any casting yet.
Frankfurt’s HessenInvestFilm and Stuttgart-based MFG Baden-Württemberg have allocated $1.9m (e1.35m) to Germany’s first 3D live action film, Alex Winter’s The Gate.
The UK-born actor-director’s remake of the 1987 horror film will begin production at the MMC Studios in Cologne in the late summer. The film has also received $1.2m (e900,000) from Düsseldorf’s Filmstiftung NRW.
The original, which starred Stephen Dorff, followed three young children who accidentally release a horde of nasty, pint-sized demons from a hole in a suburban backyard. What follows is a classic battle between good and evil as the three kids struggle to overcome a nightmarish hell that is literally taking over the Earth.
It is the second collaboration between the studios’ production arm MMC Independent and Andras Hamori’s H20 Motion Pictures after they co-produced Stephen Frears’ Cheri last year.
Visual effects for The Gate will be handled by the Frankfurt and Stuttgart studios of Pixomondo. Its recent credits include Niki Muellerschoen’s The Red Baron, Roland Emmerich’s 2012 and James McTeigue’s Ninja Assassin.
In addition, HessenInvestFilm awarded $384,523 (e250,000) for UK writer-director Mark Cairns’ mystery thriller Cold Storage, which is being planned as a 3D feature by Frankfurt’s MagnaManaProduction.
Two things that have proven to be pretty dependable at the box office in recent years are horror movies and Christopher Nolan movies. With Nolan’s The Odyssey absolutely dominating the box office this past weekend, many fans of Nolan’s work have been left hungry for a Nolan-directed horror movie. After all, The Odyssey does whet the appetite for Nolan nightmare fuel.
Christopher Nolan has brushed up against the horror genre in the past with 2002 thriller Insomnia, but does he have any interest in someday making a full-on horror movie?
Nolan tells the Empire Podcast in a new chat, “I’ve always been interested in doing a horror film.”
“But horror is most successful when the conceptual framework of whatever the story is is just so undeniable. I think there are very few really great horror movies,” Nolan continues.
So why hasn’t Christopher Nolan directed a horror movie yet?
He explains to Empire, “I’ve never clicked with a particular idea or concept that worked for me. I love the genre. Of all genres, it’s the most visceral. Where the direct response to the audience is the most important. That is to say, you’re trying to make people literally feel something in their bones about what’s going on on-screen.”
Nolan calls horror “a genre in which experimentation is demanded.” He explains, “I go to see a lot of horror films with my kids these days, and you’ll see things in the first half an hour, 45 minutes of any horror film that you’d never see in another genre. Risks that are taken. Dangerous approaches to things. Admittedly, a lot of movies can’t sustain that to the end. But in the horror genre, that kind of innovation is not just respected – it’s really demanded.”
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is now playing in theaters.
Cillian Murphy as Scarecrow in Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight’ (2008)
You must be logged in to post a comment.