Movies
[TIFF ’13] Relativity Acquires Terrifying ‘Oculus’
Relativity is in final negotiations to partner with Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Prods. to buy Oculus at the Toronto International Film Festival, Variety is reporting.
The deal was announced four days after Oculus world premiered in the Midnight Madness section at Toronto.
Read Mike Pereira’s raving review of Oculus here.
Relativity said it plans a wide release but has not set the date.
The film was directed by Mike Flanagan from a script he wrote with Jeff Howard, based on the short film that Flanagan and Jeff Seidman created in 2005.
“It is centered on a cursed 300-year-old mirror with a brother and sister (Thwaits and Gillan) finding the cause of their parents’ deaths — a mirror which has caused destruction in over its 300-year history.“
Karen Gillan, Brenton Thwaits and Katee Sackhoff star. The film was produced by Mark D. Evans and Trevor Macy via Intrepid Pictures.
FilmDistrict acquired U.S. distribution rights at Cannes last year but has backed away from that pact recently due to a proviso calling for a wide release. So the project’s U.S. rights were up for sale again through Paradigm.
From director Sébastien Vaniček, Evil Dead Burn releases in theaters July 10, but that’s just one of two brand new Evil Dead movies releasing in the next two years.
Evil Dead Wrath recently wrapped production, with the upcoming film from director Francis Galluppi (The Last Stop in Yuma County) set for theatrical release on April 7, 2028.
We’ve known virtually nothing about the movie up to this point, but a recent interview with producer Rob Tapert has surfaced this week (thanks, Dread Central) and it reveals a very surprising bit of information about Evil Dead Wrath. The film is set in 1972!!
Tapert told the students at Michigan State University during a chat, “Evil Dead Wrath is yet another great departure. It predates everything. It takes place in 1972.”
That means Evil Dead Wrath takes place even before the arrival of Ash Williams and friends to that infamous cabin in the woods, which should give the film a whole new kind of flavor.
Sam Raimi’s Army of Darkness was of course set in the Middle Ages, but Evil Dead Wrath will take place chronologically before Ash Williams was transported into medieval times!
“It will feel like a 1972 movie because the director and his DP want to imitate the film’s look and feel of something that’s called Ektachrome 100, which was a film stock,” Tapert notes. “Still available. A lot of movies shot on back then. And so it’s very warm, very tungsten.”
Tapert calls Wrath “very Tarantino-esque, very deliberate. [Galluppi] made a movie, not a horror movie, that I liked a great deal called Last Stop in Yuma County. It’s worth looking up.”
The Last Stop in Yuma County, it’s interesting to note, is also set in the 1970s!
Charlotte Hope (The Nun), Jessica McNamee (Mortal Kombat), Zach Gilford (“Midnight Mass”), Josh Helman (Mad Max: Fury Road), Ella Newton (Dangerous Animals), Elizabeth Cullen (Diabolic), and Ella Oliphant will star in Evil Dead Wrath.
Evil Dead creator Sam Raimi and franchise producer Rob Tapert are producing. Bruce Campbell and Lee Cronin will executive produce alongside Romel Adam and Jose Canas.
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