Movies
Mega Budget Director Roland Emmerich Does $5m Alien Invasion Flick?!
Are the end of times coming… in Hollywood? Could this be evidence of a changing trend that’ll soon sweep the entire filmmaking world and infect other A-list directors like Steven Spielberg or Michael Bay? J.J. Abrams was one of the first to take a small budget and catapult it into the mega feature known as Cloverfield. The trend is hotter than I thought as Roland Emmerich pulled a shocker by getting behind the camera for a super secret $5m alien invasion indie only known as The Zone. The man hans’t worked with less than $100m in over 16 years — can he pull a rabbit out of his hat? Let’s hope so. I love this trend and think it’s great for the business…a business plagued by overspending.
The man who destroyed the White House and made one of the biggest alien invasion movies of all time, is secretly returning to the genre, this time in a decidedly small way.
Roland Emmerich, who directed Independence Day and is one of the masters of the modern tentpole, is gearing up to shoot The Zone, a stealth project that is joining the swelling ranks of the “found footage” genre, which purport to be genuine reels, tapes or files found after the person operating the camera expires.
Alien invasion flick Cloverfield kicked off the trend, which also encompasses the hugely successful Paranormal Activity movies.
No plot details are known but sources say Zone revolves around an alien invasion, will be improv-based and cast with relative unknowns.
In fact, word is that two leads were just cast, one playing a haggard journalist in his 40s or 50s, the other a black man in his early to mid 20’s, the cameraman.
Emmerich, who hasn’t worked on movie with budgets of less than $100 million since 1994’s Stargate, will be operating with only $5 million in the bank, less than what the upcoming alien invasion movie Skyline had to work with.
Sources say Sony will distribute the movie as a negative pick-up. The studio, a frequent home for Emmerich, had no comment.
French writer-director Guillaume Tunzini penned the script and Loucas George is a producer on the pic, which will begin shooting mid-November. Sources say Sony, which had no comment, will distribute the movie as a negative pick-up
Making Zone may signal a trend for Emmerich in that the disaster film maestro is embracing moviemaking with more modest budgets. The CAA-repped director is in post on Anonymous, a political thriller set in the time of Queen Elizabeth I.
Movies
‘Werewolf By Night 2’? Michael Giacchino Says It’s Being Talked About But “Everything Takes Forever”
It was Oscar-winning composer Michael Giacchino who sat in the director’s chair for Marvel’s Disney+ Halloween special Werewolf by Night back in 2022, which was released in both throwback black & white as well as full color. But are we ever getting a sequel?
Giacchino tells Screen Rant in a new chat this week that he remains hopeful.
“We’re talking about it,” Giacchino explains. “Everything takes forever to do. There’s a lot of planning that has to happen. Everything has to fit in a particular place at a particular time.”
He adds, “So, nothing moves as fast as we’d like it to. But I hope one day that you will be sitting there watching another Werewolf by Night. That’s my hope.”
Inspired by horror films of the ’30s and ’40s, Marvel Studios’ Werewolf by Night takes place on a dark and somber night as a secret cabal of monster hunters emerge from the shadows and gather at the foreboding Bloodstone Temple following the death of their leader.
In a strange memorial to the leader’s life, the attendees are thrust into a mysterious and deadly competition for a powerful relic—a hunt that will ultimately bring them face to face with a dangerous monster.
Meagan Navarro wrote in her review for BD, “The MCU kicked the horror into overdrive with Werewolf by Night. The nearly hour-long feature presents as a classic horror movie, dropping viewers into the middle of a secret world of monster hunters. Film composer Michael Giacchino directs the special, penned by Heather Quinn and Peter Cameron. Giacchino focuses on evoking the classic horror vibe to assist in the initial worldbuilding. The events play out in monochrome, save for the vibrant red glow of the Bloodstone. Cigarette burns and film grain get added for that retro look. The rules of the hunt get relayed to the cutthroat candidates by way of reanimated dead, albeit in a much campier and family-friendly way via animatronics.”
“Aside from the aesthetics, Werewolf leans heavily into the mysterious,” Meagan continued. “The black and white cinematography more than sets the retro vibe; it allows the feature to remain accessible to a wider audience even as it lets its monsters and monster hunters spill plenty of blood. Toss in a Jack Pierce-inspired beast with practical application, and you’ve got a modern superhero story with a classic Universal Monsters makeover.”