Movies
‘Charles Fort’ Leads Group of Period ‘Ghostbusters’
Universal Pictures is plotting a spooky feature called Charles Fort with producer Robert Zemeckis and screenwriter Evan Spiliotopoulos, says THR. Fort, which is being described by some who know the material as a “period ‘Ghostbusters’,” is the first project set up under Zemeckis and his Imagemovers’ newly minted first-look deal with the studio.
Charles Fort was an early-twentieth-century American researcher and writer whose focus was “anomalous phenomena” and the unexplained. Books Fort wrote such as “The Book of the Damned” (1919) and “New Lands” (1923) were some of the first to explore everything from levitation and teleportation to alien abduction and other paranormal pursuits. Fort was essentially a curious skeptic who enjoyed collecting data to support explanations for things that he felt were no less possible than the scientifically accepted ones.
Dark Horse Comics published a four-issue series in 2002 titled “Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained”, which turned Fort into an adventurous investigator tangling with aliens and murderers in turn-of-the-nineteenth-century New York City.
Dark Horse Entertainment also has an adaptation of its comic R.I.P.D. in production at Universal for a summer 2013 release.
Before updating the video nasty Faces of Death, director Daniel Goldhaber and writer Isa Mazzei explored the dangers of online life in tech-thriller Cam, their feature debut that was acquired by Netflix in 2018 after making waves on the festival circuit.
At the end of last year, the Netflix exclusive quietly departed from the streaming platform, left without another streaming home.
It’s not an isolated story; Mike Flanagan’s Hush also left streaming entirely for a period until it was finally picked up on both physical media and other streaming services.
While the tech-thriller currently isn’t available to watch on Netflix, Tubi, Hulu, or any other platforms, that’s not a problem for Cam thanks to a very cool move by Goldhaber: the director has made his breakout film accessible to watch online for free via his website.
As his site notes: “CAM is unfortunately not currently available to view on any platforms, so you can watch it here if you like :).“
No subscriptions or fees necessary, just hit play.
Cam follows Alice (Madeline Brewer), who works as an online cam girl obsessed with her ranking on the cam site. The higher her ranking goes, the more it draws unwanted attention, and Alice soon finds herself replaced on her own show with a doppelganger.
Written by Mazzei, a former camgirl, it uses the horror thriller premise to examine the life of a sex worker; Alice’s career ambition is directly at odds with the shame it brings to her family, and how she tries to spare them from it by keeping them in the dark. It only compounds her danger when the doppelganger enters the equation in Goldhaber’s engaging thriller.
For a deep dive into the treacherous world of Cam, listen to Horror Queers’ episode on it now.
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