Movies
‘Maniac’ Director’s App ‘I-Lived’ Launching
IFC’s Maniac, pictured, is brutal and fantastic, and because of it director Franck Khalfoun is all of a sudden the hottest horror director at Cannes.
Deadline reports that he will next direct I-Lived, his follow-up to the Elijah Wood-starring Maniac.
Based on his own script, “the movie centers on a young online app reviewer whose latest assignment mysteriously improves his life, but also starts to tear him apart.”
Ehud Bleiberg, Alix Taylor and Pavlina Hatoupis are producing along with the director. Tiffany Boyle and Nicholas Donnermeyer are executive producing.
Bleiberg Entertainment’s Compound B division kicks off sales next week in Cannes and principal photography is set to start at the end of May.
Khalfoun got his start working closely with French helmer Alexandre Aja and acted in the director’s High Tension and Piranha. His Maniac, a reboot of the cult 1980 serial killer movie, had an official out of competition screening berth in Cannes last year. IFC Midnight acquired it for the U.S. Khalfoun’s other directing credits include P2 and Wrong Turn At Tahoe.
Movies
Christopher Landon to Helm Feature Adaptation of Grady Hendrix’s ‘The Final Girl Support Group’
A new feature adaptation of author Grady Hendrix‘s slasher book The Final Girl Support Group is now on the way from Paramount Pictures, and Deadline reports that it’s found its director in Christopher Landon (Drop, Happy Death Day).
The two previously collaborated on My Best Friend’s Exorcism.
In The Final Girl Support Group, “Lynette is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre. For more than a decade, she’s been meeting with five other final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, working to put their lives back together. Then one woman misses a meeting, and their worst fears are realized—someone knows about the group and is determined to rip their lives apart again, piece by piece.”
“But the thing about final girls is that no matter how bad the odds, how dark the night, how sharp the knife, they will never, ever give up.”
I wrote in my novel review for BD, “Hendrix puts his characters through the absolute wringer. It’s a bloody, vicious voyage for the flawed heroine, both physically and emotionally. In terms of action and horror, Support Group delivers breakneck pacing and thrills.”
Five years ago, Andy Muschietti & Barbara Muschietti (Mama, It, It Chapter Two) were attached to produce a planned series adaptation for HBO Max alongside Charlize Theron. While Theron is no longer producing, the Muschiettis remain on board under their Double Dream label.
Paramount Pictures is also developing Hendrix’s sci-fi novella, BadAsstronauts.
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