Movies
‘Terminator’/’Hardware’-esque Genre Thriller ‘The Machine’
Content has tapped Caity Lotz (pictured; The Pact) and Toby Stephens (Severance) to play the lead roles in the sci-fi action thriller The Machine, reports Variety.
“Set in the near future and with the world plunged into another cold war, Britain’s Ministry of Defense is on the verge of developing a robotic soldier. This soldier, called The Machine (Lotz), looks and sounds human, but has the strength, speed, and ruthlessness beyond that of any living person. The project is near completion when a bug in the programming, a side effect of it being too close to human coding, causes the prototype to destroy the lab and everyone in its path in spectacularly violent fashion. Undeterred by this setback, lead scientist Vincent McCarthy (Stephens) obsessively continues his work on The Machine in secret, away from the prying eyes of those who seek to destroy him.” The plot sounds like The Terminator meets Hardware.
The pic is directed by Caradog James (“Little White Lies”) and produced by John Giwa-Amu from Red and Black Films while Content’s Jamie Carmichael is exec producer.
Shooting will start July 23 in Cardiff in the United Kingdom.
A bedtime lullaby soothes an unsettling newborn in our exclusive clip from Nightborn, from Hatching filmmaker Hanna Bergholm.
The dark fable makes its debut on Shudder on July 31.
Seidi Haarla (Compartment No. 6) and Rupert Grint (Knock at the Cabin, “Servant”) star as new parents in Nightborn, and this exclusive clip highlights mom’s harrowing transition into motherhood.
In Nightborn, “With dreams of starting a perfect family, Saga and her British husband Jon move to the isolated house where she spent much of her childhood, deep in the Finnish forest. But as soon as their baby is born, despite the reassurance of all around her, Saga knows there’s something terribly wrong with her son. As their marriage starts to crack, Jon struggles to support his wife, but only Saga suspects the terrible truth about her newborn.”
Pamela Tola, Pirkko Saisio, Rebecca Lacey and John Thomson also star.
Bergholm teased of her maternal horror movie, “In Nordic countries, there’s a long-standing mythology of trolls living in the forests. In ancient times, people truly believed that trolls inhabited the woods and had a kind of control over nature. And in Nightborn, the forest reflects Saga’s emotions and the animalistic, primitive physical side of humankind.”
“Hanna Bergholm’s audacious sophomore follow up to Hatching delivers tension and shocking moments surrounding parenthood and self discovery — with a touch of humor,” said Emily Gotto, senior vice president of acquisitions and production at Shudder. “We are thrilled to share Nightborn with audiences.”