Movies
ENOUGH of These Underground Games. Hideo Nakata, It’s a Little Late.
I saw it at Sundance 2009 with Jonathan Liebesman’s The Killing Room, the UK just saw the release of The Exam, and both were inspired by numerous films over the years (ranging from Cube to Battle Royale) — Japanese director Hideo Nakata (Ringu, The Ring Two) hopes to do a better job when he pays his subjects $1,200 a day to play a new twisted game entitled The Incite Mill. Read on for the skinny.
Hideo Nakata, the J Horror maestro of “Ring” and “Ring 2” fame, has inked a deal with talent shop Horipro to helm psychological suspenser “The Incite Mill.”
The pic, which is a based on an eponymous bestseller by Honobu Yonezawa, tells a “Big Brother”-ish tale of 10 people who hire on for a “job” paying $1,200 per hour, only to find themselves locked in an underground complex and forced to play a murder game for seven days.
Of the 10 main cast members, eight are repped by Horipro, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary. These include hot young thesps Tatsuya Fujiwara (“Death Note”), Haruka Ayase (“Happy Flight”) and Satomi Ishihara (“No Longer Human”). The two other cast members will be picked soon, one from the Horipro ranks and one through a nationwide audition.
Nakata will starting shooting this March with release skedded for the fall.
A contemporary reimagining of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story Herbert West: Reanimator is on the way, and Deadline has unveiled the first look at the new Herbert West and the pathologist drawn to his orbit.
Adam Simon (The Haunting in Connecticut, “Salem”) and Tim Metcalfe (The Haunting in Connecticut, Kalifornia) penned the script. The original screenplay and storyline come from Jade Sandberg Wallace.
Michael Grossman (“The Originals”, “Pretty Little Liars”) directs.
The new images introduce star Joseph Morgan (“Vampire Diaries“), who plays “brilliant surgeon and scientist Herbert West, who is obsessed with creating a serum to reanimate the dead.” Katie Cassidy (Speed Demon) stars opposite as the pathologist with a troubled past who joins his efforts.
Together, they prove that conquering death may be the ultimate sin against life itself.
The film’s official synopsis: “As a child, Herbert West watches his father Peter reanimate his dead mother Judith in a secret basement lab — only for Judith to mortally wound Peter and nearly kill Herbert before Peter shoots her. The trauma leaves its mark on Herbert, but so does one final image: his mother’s finger, twitching after death. Thirty years later, Herbert West is a brilliant, secretive surgeon still chasing his father’s obsession.
“Pathologist Kate Locke arrives in town and is drawn into his orbit — first through a spark at a hospital fundraiser, then through his secret lab, where he reveals a serum capable of reanimating severed tissue. Kate, hiding a dark past of her own, is thrilled rather than horrified, and moves into West’s mansion to work alongside him. Their early experiments on a cadaver succeed only briefly. West concludes that dead tissue is the problem — they need something fresher.”
Supporting cast includes Scott Aiello, Ira J Amyx, Randall Newsome, Emma Reinagal, James D. Bryce, Kathryn A Bentley, Jack Lancaster, Amy Holland Pennell, John Pierson, Mindy Shaw, Eric Dean White, Tristan Wilder Hallet, Adrienne Lamping, Aaron Crippen, and Drew Patterson.
Makeup artist Jeff Lewis (“Star Trek: Voyager,” “Star Trek: Enterprise”) and cousin Roger Lewis are heading the production via their newly established Woodlake Entertainment.
Lovecraft’s short story, first serialized in Home Brew magazine in 1922, is the first among his works to mention the fictional Miskatonic University. It was most famously adapted into a 1985 horror movie from Stuart Gordon, starring Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West.
Herbert West: Reanimator is set in Alton, Illinois, where production is now underway.
Herbert West: Reanimator. Photo credit: Matt Lief Anderson
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