Movies
Genre Screenwriter Brings Monsters to ‘Dark Island’
Fans of Broken, The Devil’s Chair and Blood River get ready for more from screenwriter Simon Boyes as Bloody-Disgusting has learned that he’ll be taking a small break from working with Adam Mason to bring us Dak Island, a new horror film that continues shooting in Los Angeles next week. Beyond the break you can get the inside scoop on the movie, watch this spot for more as it comes in.
In Dark Island five members of a pseudo-militaristic scientific expedition were sent to a remote island for weapons testing, until the weapon got out of hand.
We got in touch with Simon who gives us some more depth into the project.
“The movie’s directed by Niko Pueringer and Sam Gorski,” he tells us. “They’ve actually shot the bulk of the movie already up in Canada but they’re casting for a couple of new scenes that they’re shooting around LA.”
He continues, “I got involved because I saw a couple of movies these guys did while they were still at college and they were super ambitious ideas (one was an anime inspired movie about a giant monster attacking a city) and the movies were loads of fun and well put together. The effects work they did on those for the money was insane and really impressive. I think all they needed was someone to give them a shot with a bigger budget, and when Patrick Ewald at Epic Pictures decided to put up the money I was keen to get involved and work with them on a fun script, and really see what they could do with it.”
While Dark Island is a monster movie, it’s also very sci-fi.
“It’s a sci-fi infused, effects driven monster movie, the kind of genre people usually steer clear of when they make super low budget movies, but that’s what was so cool about the concept, the ambition to make a movie like this on a limited budget.” He continues talking about taking chances in the indie world of filmmaking, “I’ve been moaning for ages that in the low budget world no-one takes a chance on a different genre, and although this could definitely fall into the wider realms of horror, it’s really quite different from your usual low budget fare.”
Watch the trailer over at BDTV
Now in its second week of release, the Radio Silence-directed Abigail is the third Universal Monsters vampire movie released in the last year, coming along in the wake of period piece The Last Voyage of the Demeter and horror-comedy Renfield. All three films have struggled at the box office, but Abigail at least has some good news to celebrate this week.
Renfield came along first in April 2023, ending its run with $26.4 million, while Last Voyage of the Demeter ended its own run with a mere $21.7 million. The vampire ballerina movie Abigail has already outgrossed both films, hitting $28.5 million at the worldwide box office this week.
The bad news is that Abigail‘s reported production budget was $28 million, so it seems unlikely to make a profit at the box office when you factor in the marketing spend and everything else on top of that figure. And that’s especially a bummer because Abigail is such a crowd-pleasing good time, with most horror fans agreeing that it’s one of this year’s best movies thus far.
The Universal Monsters brand has been struggling in the wake of Leigh Whannell’s hit The Invisible Man back in 2020, with these smaller one-shot movies failing to make their mark at the box office. Maybe it was never a good idea to release three low-key Dracula movies within the span of a single year, or maybe audiences just aren’t into vampires in general right now.
Whatever the case may be, Universal was smart to re-team with Whannell for a reimagining of the Wolf Man, which is howling its way into theaters in 2025. There’s a good chance that movie will blow the box office totals of Demeter, Renfield and Abigail out of the water, especially since it’s been a while since a Hollywood werewolf movie roared its way onto the big screen.
In the meantime, we expect Abigail will be coming home soon. Stay tuned for a date.
In Abigail, “After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, and they discover, to their mounting horror, that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl.”
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