Movies

‘Dead Rising: Watchtower’ Zombrex Ad Wants to Help You Stay You

Published

9 years ago

February 27, 2015

Ever since the Resident Evil films made clever use of the Umbrella Corporation in their advertising, faux commercials for evil video game pharmaceutical companies like Umbrella and Horzine Biotech (Killing Floor) have become an increasingly popular tool for marketing.

In Dead Rising, Phenotrans is responsible for creating and distributing an incredibly expensive medicine called Zombrex, which staves off the zombification process. Sounds like a swell idea, until you consider the fact that Phenotrans almost definitely has a cure already developed, they just aren’t interested in sharing it with the rest of the world because then they’d have to replace the hundred dollar bills in their pools with fifties.

“Live your life without fear — and as a human.” Now that’s a great slogan.

In Dead Rising: Watchtower, a group of survivors must do everything they can to escape from a city that’s been quarantined following a zombie outbreak.

It’s written by Tim Carter (Sleeping Dogs) and stars Rob Riggle (“The Daily Show”) as photojournalist Frank West, Jesse Metcalfe (John Tucker Must Die), Virginia Madsen (Sideways), Dennis Haysbert (Wreck it Ralph) and Meghan Ory (Vampire High).

The live-action adaptation is slated to release on Sony’s CRACKLE streaming service on March 27.

Adam Dodd

Gamer, writer, terrible dancer, longtime toast enthusiast. Legend has it Adam was born with a controller in one hand and the Kraken's left eye in the other. Legends are often wrong.

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Movies

‘The Invisible Man 2’ – Elisabeth Moss Says the Sequel Is Closer Than Ever to Happening

Published

14 hours ago

April 25, 2024

John Squires

Universal has been having a hell of a time getting their Universal Monsters brand back on a better path in the wake of the Dark Universe collapsing, with four movies thus far released in the years since The Mummy attempted to get that interconnected universe off the ground.

First was Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, to date the only post-Mummy hit for the Universal Monsters, followed by The Last Voyage of the Demeter, Renfield, and now Abigail. The latter three films have attempted to bring Dracula back to the screen in fresh ways, but both Demeter and Renfield severely underperformed at the box office. And while Abigail is a far better vampire movie than those two, it’s unfortunately also struggling to turn a profit.

Where does the Universal Monsters brand go from here? The good news is that Universal and Blumhouse have once again enlisted the help of Leigh Whannell for their upcoming Wolf Man reboot, which is howling its way into theaters in January 2025. This is good news, of course, because Whannell’s Invisible Man was the best – and certainly most profitable – of the post-Dark Universe movies that Universal has been able to conjure up. The film ended its worldwide run with $144 million back in 2020, a massive win considering the $7 million budget.

Given the film was such a success, you may wondering why The Invisible Man 2 hasn’t come along in these past four years. But the wait for that sequel may be coming to an end.

Speaking with the Happy Sad Confused podcast this week, The Invisible Man star Elisabeth Moss notes that she feels “very good” about the sequel’s development at this point in time.

“Blumhouse and my production company [Love & Squalor Pictures]… we are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” Moss updates this week. “And I feel very good about it.”

She adds, “We are very much intent on continuing that story.”

At the end of the 2020 movie, Elisabeth Moss’s heroine Cecilia Kass uses her stalker’s high-tech invisibility suit to kill him, now in possession of the technology that ruined her life.

Stay tuned for more on The Invisible Man 2 as we learn it.