Movies
New Artist Alliance and Caliber Media ‘Scribble’ For Horror
New Artist Alliance, an Encino, Calif.-based production company specializing in low-budget films, has secured financing for a slate of four micro-budgeted movies, all to cost less than $1 million, that it will co-produce with management/production firm Caliber Media, reports THR.
The first film under the new deal is an adaptation of the First Comics graphic novel The Scribbler, author Dan Schaffer’s tale of a woman will multiple personalities.
“The film is a noir sci-fi action thriller about a young woman recently released from a mental hospital, and continuing a treatment programme to rid her of her alternate personalities. She moves into a halfway house for mental patients where the residents begin to die at an unusual rate.”
John Suits, one of the founders of NAA, will direct the film, to be shot in 3D, which is beginning casting.
The two companies have previously produced two movies together, which are both currently in post-production: Static, a horror-thriller starring Milo Ventimiglia, Sarah Shahi and Sara Paxton, directed by Todd Levin and shot in 3D, and 3 Nights in the Desert, starring Amber Tamblyn, Wes Bentley and Vincent Piazza, which Cowan directed.
Caliber also is currently shooting Dark Was the Night, a horror film starring Kevin Durand, Lukas Haas and Bianca Kajlich, directed by Heller. And its thriller Enter Nowhere, starring Paxton, Scott Eastwood and Katherine Waterston, will be released by Lionsgate Home Entertainment in April.
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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