Movies
Release Dates To Make A Date With ‘Jug Face’
Gravitas Ventures recently aquired U.S. VOD rights to Jug Face (read our review), the tense horror-thriller that was written and directed by Chad Crawford Kinkle. The film was produced by Andrew van den Houten (Funeral Kings, The Woman) and Robert Tonino (Home Movie, Ghoul) for Modernciné, and stars Lauren Ashley Carter (The Woman), Sean Bridgers (Deadwood), Sean Young (Blade Runner), Larry Fessenden (I Sell the Dead) and Daniel Manche (The Girl Next Door). The film was executive produced by Lucky McKee, Arrien Schiltkamp and Loren Semmens. Jug face won the Slamdance Grand Prize Screenwriting Award in 2011 and debuted as a Special Screening selection at this year’s festival.
The film will receive “a pre-theatrical VOD rollout July 8th, with a day-and-date VOD and theatrical release August 9th” from Modernciné’s new distribution outfit Modern Distributors. I’m not sure what makes this second VOD window different from the first, but we’ll find out soon I suppose.
“Ada, her family and a small isolated backwoods community worship a mysterious pit. The pit has the power to heal and protect all who honor it but at a deadly price…it demands an occasional sacrifice. The pit communicates through the local potter who, while in a trance, crafts ceramic jugs that carry the face of a person to be sacrificed to the entity that lives within it. Ada has a secret about the latest jug face that she’s determined to keep hidden but the pit demands a sacrifice and unleashes an evil onto the community until it gets who it really wants.“
Theo James Krekis‘ short film Jealous People are Ugly People premiered earlier this year at SXSW and has since inspired a massive bidding war for its feature film expansion.
New Line Cinema has emerged victorious in the latest feeding frenzy over next-generation digital horror IP and its creators, Deadline reports.
Krekis will adapt Jealous People are Ugly People, directing from his own script.
In the short film, “Vasilly has become painfully jealous of his best friend, Luke. But things aren’t going so well for Luke. Every time he shares some good news, he starts to suffer from strange and violent repercussions. Disturbed by the uncanny timing, Vasilly recalls his Yiayia’s warnings about the Greek superstition of the evil eye – and starts to believe his own envy might be to blame for Luke’s bad luck.”
SXSW described the short film as ” a darkly comic psychological thriller about male jealousy, inherited superstition, and the corrosive power of repressed ambition.”
Jennifer Monks and Michelle Stein will produce the feature take alongside Isaac Klausner, John Fischer, Ben Levine and Ethan Cappello. Josh Mack and Lauren Botchan are overseeing for New Line.
Jealous People are Ugly People joins New Line’s upcoming horror slate that also includes Santiago Menghini’s The Revenge of La Llorona on February 26, 2027, and The Conjuring: First Communion on September 10, 2027.