Not only will Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, and John Hannah reprise their iconic roles as Rick O’Connell, Evelyn O’Connell, and Jonathan Carnahan in the upcoming movie, but Deadline reports that franchise veterans Kevin J. O’Connor and Oded Fehr are back as Beni Gabor and Ardeth Bay, respectively.

Also joining the cast is Numan Acar (Young Sherlock), though no character details have been revealed yet.

Radio Silence duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett (Ready or Not, Scream 5-6) are directing from a script by David Coggeshall (Orphan: First Kill).

Plot details remain under wraps at this time, but the brand new sequel is expected to skip the maligned third entry, in which Weisz opted not to reprise her role.

“It’s just really beautiful and scary and sweeping, and it’s awesome,” Gillet teases. Bettinelli-Olpin adds that the film “has all of the heart and the character that you could hope for.”

A remake of the classic Universal monster movie that took an action-adventure approach, The Mummy was released in 1999 and grossed $417 million worldwide. It was followed by The Mummy Returns in 2001 and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor in 2008.

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The Hollywood Reporter lets us know tonight that Michael Johnston is in “early talks” to join The Mummy 4, which will release in theaters on October 15, 2027 via Universal.

Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, and John Hannah will reprise their iconic roles as Rick O’Connell, Evelyn O’Connell, and Jonathan Carnahan in the upcoming movie.

Radio Silence duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett (Ready or Not, Scream 5-6) are directing from a script by David Coggeshall (Orphan: First Kill).

Plot details are being kept under wraps at this time, but the brand new sequel is expected to disregard the events of the third movie, in which Rachel Weisz did not appear.

“It’s just really beautiful and scary and sweeping, and it’s awesome,” Gillet teases. Bettinelli-Olpin adds that the film “has all of the heart and the character that you could hope for.”

A remake of the classic Universal monster movie that took an action-adventure approach, The Mummy was released in 1999 and grossed $417 million worldwide. It was followed by The Mummy Returns in 2001 and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor in 2008.

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Mali Elfman (Next Exit) is directing the film, with Radio Silence producing.

Deadline details, “Based on an original screenplay by Noga Pnueli (Meet Cute), Thud watches as the Grim Reaper and the Devil meet cute at a three-day destination wedding, falling in love after colliding at the event, where they’ve each come to sow their own chaos.”

Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin are producing Thud for Radio Silence. The project marks a reunion between the filmmaking team and Sarah Michelle Gellar after Ready or Not 2.

Deadline notes that Thud will shoot in Los Angeles “with a California tax credit.”

Mali Elfman directed the animated short The Scariest Skeleton, and she’s also produced horror films including Queens of the Dead, Haunting of Queen Mary, and Birth/Rebirth.

Mali Elfman is the daughter of legendary composer/musician Danny Elfman.

The post Sarah Michelle Gellar Playing the Grim Reaper in Supernatural Romance from Producers Radio Silence appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Deadline reports, “Radio Silence’s Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett will work from a script by Tom Bissell, a WGA Award winner with credits including Andor and The Disaster Artist.”

The outlet adds in today’s report, “No details yet as to the plot of the feature take.”

Deadline goes on to explain in their exclusive report, “The series officially launched at Bantam Books in 1979 with The Cave of Time, a book by Edward Packard, who had ideated a novel branching-story concept while telling bedtime stories to his daughters. Between 1997 and 1999, more than 184 of these gamebooks were published from 30 different authors, with stories set everywhere from the ocean to outer space and myriad fantasy worlds.”

No word yet on which of the books the Radio Silence feature film will be pulling from (if any), what genre the movie will ultimately be, or how it will work the line’s trademark interactivity into a movie-going experience. But we’ll be sure to report more as we learn more.

For what it’s worth, the books did frequently brush up against the horror and science fiction genres, and it’s hard to imagine Radio Silence not embracing some of those genre elements.

The post ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ Movie in the Works from ‘Scream’ Directors Radio Silence appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Look for Searchlight Pictures’ Ready or Not 2: Here I Come on digital platforms, including Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and Fandango at Home, on May 5, followed by a Blu-ray and DVD release on June 16.

Samara Weaving and Kathryn Newton star as blood-soaked sisters hunted by four rival families, each ruthlessly vying for absolute power and control of the High Seat of the Council.

Bonus Features* include…

• The Game Goes On: The Making of Ready or Not 2 – A 4-part behind-the-scenes featurette featuring filmmakers, talent, design, and the practical effects.
• Part 1: Written in Blood – The directors and cast discuss what sets the sequel apart from the first film, and how the team expanded the story in a meaningful way.
• Part 2: Casting the Chaos – A spotlight on the film’s main cast and what they each brought to their roles. 
• Part 3: Designed for Destruction – Dive deeper into the design and execution of the film’s finale with a look at the set construction, practical effects, and the bloody aftermath left behind. 
• Part 4: Blood, Guts, and Practical Mayhem – Explore how the film’s explosive deaths and blood gags were created with this breakdown of the practical effects and innovations, highlighting how the team built and expanded upon techniques from the first film. 
• Rules of the Game – Learn the rules of the deadly game of Hide and Seek, from the contained family ritual to the expanded high-stakes hunt.
• Gag Reel – Check out hilarious outtakes from the making of the movie.
• Audio Commentary by directors / executive producers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, Samara Weaving, and Kathryn Newton.
• Audio Commentary by directors / executive producers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, executive producers/writers Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy, producers James Vanderbilt and Tripp Vinson, and editor Jay Prychidny.

*Bonus features may vary by product and retailer.

Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett of Radio Silence and writers Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy are back at the helm.

Picking up moments after the all-out attack from the Le Domas family, Grace (Weaving) discovers she’s reached the next level of the nightmarish game — and this time with her estranged sister Faith (Newton) at her side.

Grace has one chance to survive, keep her sister alive, and claim the High Seat of the Council that controls the world. Four rival families are hunting her for the throne, and whoever wins rules it all.

Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, Néstor Carbonell, David Cronenberg, Elijah Wood, Kevin Durand, Olivia Cheng, Varun Saranga, and Daniel Beirne round out the cast.

The post ‘Ready or Not 2: Here I Come’ Heads to Digital Next Week, Physical Media in June appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Brendan Fraser is pictured in the front row of the ride alongside Radio Silence filmmakers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett, who will be directing The Mummy 4. Universal captions the photo, “Getting back into character! Brendan Fraser had a blast braving Revenge of the Mummy: The Ride at Universal Studios in preparation for reprising the role of Rick O’Connell.”

Filming begins this Summer. Check out the photo below and expect more soon!

Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz will both be reprising their iconic roles as Rick and Evelyn O’Connell in the untitled upcoming movie, with John Hannah also returning.

The Mummy 4 will release in theaters May 19, 2028 from Universal.

Plot details are being kept under wraps at this time, but the brand new sequel is expected to disregard the events of the third movie, in which Rachel Weisz did not appear.

“It’s just really beautiful and scary and sweeping, and it’s awesome,” Gillet teases. Bettinelli-Olpin adds that the film “has all of the heart and the character that you could hope for.”

A remake of the classic Universal monster movie that took an action-adventure approach, The Mummy was released in 1999 and grossed $417 million worldwide. It was followed by The Mummy Returns in 2001 and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor in 2008.

The franchise led by Brendan Fraser has nothing whatsoever to do with Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, in theaters April 17. And no, Brendan Fraser is not in Lee Cronin’s The Mummy.

The post Brendan Fraser Preps for ‘The Mummy 4’ Return on ‘The Mummy’ Ride at Universal Hollywood! [Photo] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Eli Craig (Tucker and Dale vs Evil, Clown in a Cornfield) is directing from a script he co-wrote with JT Billings (“Are You Afraid of the Dark?”), with Radio Silence (Ready or Not, Scream 5-6) producing.

The logline reads: “Eight friends. One prize. Zero trust. Their annual festive holiday gift exchange spirals into a cutthroat game of Christmas carnage.”

The project is the first under MRC’s partnership with Radio Silence and Project X, dubbed RSPX, oriented around inventive and engaging horror and thriller projects.

Spencer Berman, Nick Jonas, William Sherak, Paul Neinstein, James Vanderbilt, Tyler Gillett, and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin are producing, with Billings, Ryan McDonough, Amanda Drake, Newton, Scott Levine, and Chad Villella executive producing.

White Elephant began production this week. We’ll keep you posted on more casting news.

The post Kathryn Newton & Nick Jonas to Star in Holiday Horror Film ‘White Elephant’ from ‘Tucker & Dale’ Director appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come debuted in the #4 spot at the domestic box office this weekend, making $9.1 million in the United States and a total of $11.9 million thus far worldwide.

The horror sequel faced stiff competition in the form of both Hoppers and the Ryan Gosling-starring Project Hail Mary, but the good news for the film is that the reviews were strong heading into the weekend. Ready or Not 2 is Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with a 75% score from critics and a 90% score from audiences, which no doubt helped sell some tickets.

The other good news? The reported production budget for Ready or Not 2: Here I Come was just $14 million, so Searchlight Pictures should be able to turn a profit when all is said and done. That being said, it’s unlikely that Ready or Not will become a trilogy at this point. The first sequel usually determines whether or not a two-movie saga becomes a full-blown franchise, so it was probably smart for Radio Silence to wrap things up with their seven-years-later sequel. And if you’ve seen Here I Come, well, it’s pretty clear that was their intention all along.

The first Ready or Not movie was indeed released in theaters seven years ago, which feels like a lifetime these days. It debuted to $8 million in the United States and went on to make $28.7 million domestically and $57.6 million worldwide, heights the sequel is unlikely to reach.

It doesn’t help the movie’s case that Warner Bros. is releasing They Will Kill You starring Zazie Beetz in theaters this coming weekend, which looks very similar to the Ready or Not films. There was a time when Ready or Not 2 and They Will Kill You were set to release on the very same day, but Searchlight Pictures made the smart decision to bump up Ready or Not 2.

Stay tuned for updates on They Will Kill You‘s box office performance.

The post ‘Ready or Not 2: Here I Come’ Opening Weekend Box Office Hits $9.1 Million appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The action-adventure horror-comedy is aiming to enter production this summer for a May 19, 2028 release from Universal.

“We’re supposed to start prep in May, and hopefully shooting starts in August,” Gillett tells Collider.

Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz will reprise their iconic roles as Rick and Evelyn O’Connell in the film, scripted by David Coggeshall (Orphan: First Kill).

Plot details are being kept under wraps, but the project is said to be a sequel that disregards the events of the third movie (in which Weisz was recast with Maria Bello).

Gillett recently told Bloody Disgusting they plan to favor practical effects over digital. “Obviously, there are going to be big grand set pieces that are going to require some of that, but I think our goal is to put ourselves and the crew and the cast in as real a situation as we can.”

Sean Daniel, who produced the original movies with his late partner James Jacks, is back as producer. William Sherak, James Vanderbilt, and Paul Neinstein will produce through Project X Entertainment.

Fraser, Hivemind’s Jason F. Brown, and Denis Stewart will executive produce. Executive VP of production development Jay Polidoro and director of production development Jacqueline Garell are overseeing the project for Universal.

A remake of the classic Universal monster movie, The Mummy was released in 1999 and grossed $422.5 million worldwide. It was followed by The Mummy Returns in 2001 and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor in 2008.

The post Radio Silence’s ‘The Mummy 4’ Aims for August Production Start appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The directors, also known as Radio Silence, up the ante in the sequel Ready or Not 2: Here I Come.

It’s not just double the protagonists and double the satanists out to murder them; Ready or Not 2 doubles down on the gore, too.

Considering the amount of Satanists in this sequel, and their penchant for exploding into a massive amount of blood and viscera, could this be Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s bloodiest film yet? “We’ve been going back and forth on that,” Bettinelli-Olpin tells Bloody Disgusting. “We don’t know.

“We do know we used 325 gallons in this one, which is a lot.“

Gillett recalls, “I feel like we did more testing on Abigail, which is one of the reasons why the blood amount was so high. I mean, the body, the pool of bodies on Abigail was a lot, and maybe a little bit of a cheat. We shot the blood cannons in Abigail practically as well, but I feel like there was a little, slightly more digital enhancement in Abigail. I don’t know where the ceiling is for us on this.”

The filmmakers don’t necessarily set out to top themselves in the gore department, though. Bettinelli-Olpin explains, “I think this is what suits this particular story, but that said, I think, because we do work with the same group on a lot of these movies or all of these movies, there is a desire amongst all of us to continue to push ourselves and challenge ourselves. Why it is largely centered around exploding bodies, I do not know. I mean, it’s really fun.

“We are figuring something out,” Bettinelli-Olpin deadpans.

Gillett adds, “Triple down on it.”

Adding to the sequel’s maximalist quality is an even bigger cast, with horror master David Cronenberg appearing early in a pivotal role. It turns out that his casting was even a surprise to Ready or Not 2‘s directors.

“No, because I don’t think we ever in a million years thought we would get David Cronenberg to be in a movie,” Bettinelli-Olpin answers when asked whether Cronenberg was the first choice to play the father of Sarah Michelle Gellar and Shawn Hatosy‘s characters in the film. “Our casting director was like, ‘Hey, we could take a swing at David Cronenberg.’ Of course, within seconds, we were like, ‘Oh my God, yes, please, that’d be incredible.’ I mean, we’re still pinching ourselves that he said yes, it’s fucking crazy.'”

“I think the idea, too, is that he is playing a character that the world has so much reverence for in the story. Then he shows up on set, and he’s a man who you just, there’s so much reverence for him. I mean, he’s in so many ways, and obviously a gentleman, and lovely, and kind, and not a Satan worshiper, but it was just like, it felt like he had that level of power in the making of it because we were just so starstruck,” Gillett says.

“He brings a level of gravitas to that role that is pretty incredible.”

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is now showing in theaters.

The post Radio Silence on Casting David Cronenberg and Spilling Even More Blood in ‘Ready or Not 2: Here I Come’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

In March, we bracketed Spanish language hit Thesis (listen) and the 3D Friday the 13th – aka Part III (listen) with a celebration of two Radio Silence films. We began the month with a look at their second Scream film – VI (listen) – and now we’re covering their 2019 hide and seek horror comedy, Ready or Not, in anticipation of the sequel Ready or Not 2: Here I Come.

In the film, Grace (Samara Weaving) is an orphan in search of a family. She thinks she’s found it in her ultra-wealthy fiancé, Alex LeDomas (Mark O’Brien). The only issue? His family – headed up by patriarch Tony (Henry Czerny), matriarch Becky (Andie MacDowell), and ne’er do well siblings like Daniel (Adam Brody), appear to have weird ulterior motives.

When Grace is forced to pick a card in a bizarre midnight ceremony, the fun and games begin. As she desperately tries to survive “Hide and Seek”, the LeDomas family will do anything to kill her before sunrise. Jaunty records, carcass-ridden goat pits, and plenty of screaming blood sacs ensue.

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, and RSS.

Episode 378: Ready or Not (2019)

Lace up your yellow chucks and rip that wedding dress because we are revisiting Radio Silence’s Ready or Not (2019).

Starring Scream Queen Samara Weaving (in her break-out role), the “Explode The Rich” horror comedy is as good as ever (Trace) or even better than before (Joe).

Plus: Grace as a “Final Girl”, a cast of Canadians, speculations about the mythology, and the original ending that would have been completely unacceptable.

Cross out Ready or Not!

Coming Up Next: We’re celebrating the arrival of Spring with a look at the original Wicker Man from 1973.

P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for over 474 hours of Patreon content including this month’s new episodes on Psycho Killer, The Bride!, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, Scream 7, a new audio commentary on Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon and our continuing coverage of Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House (2018) on the Requel tier.

The post Saying I Do to Radio Silence’s ‘Ready or Not’ [Horror Queers Podcast] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The filmmaking duo, also known as Radio Silence, is set to direct The Mummy 4 for Universal, scheduled for release on May 19, 2028.

Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz have officially signed on to reprise their iconic roles as Rick and Evelyn O’Connell in the as-yet-untitled fourth installment in The Mummy franchise, written by David Coggeshall (Orphan: First Kill).

Plot details, of course, are under wraps at this time, though the directors have hinted that it’ll disregard the third entry, which saw Weisz replaced by Maria Bello.

When speaking with Gillett and Bettinelli-Olpin ahead of Ready or Not 2’s release, the directors teased more about the project and whether they’d continue their streak of employing practical effects as much as possible, especially in a franchise that emerged in the ’90s with some noticeably dated VFX.

“I think we can fully say that’s the aim,” Gillett tells Bloody Disgusting about whether they’ll opt for practical over VFX. “To steer into Raiders [of the Lost Ark] territory. Obviously, there are going to be big grand set pieces that are going to require some of that, but I think our goal is to put ourselves and the crew and the cast in as real a situation as we can.”

A remake of the classic Universal monster movie, The Mummy was released in 1999 and grossed $422.5 million worldwide. It was followed by The Mummy Returns in 2001 and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor in 2008.

The Mummy Returns, in particular, has been criticized for its VFX, notably of the villainous Scorpion King (Dwayne Johnson). So this is especially great news to hear.

Stay tuned for more from Bloody Disgusting’s chat and more on Ready or Not 2.

The post ‘The Mummy 4’ Directors Confirm Plans to Emphasize Practical Effects Over CG appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

To whet your appetite for the gruesome mayhem, Bloody Disgusting is exclusively debuting a brand new featurette that introduces Weaving’s co-star: a state of the art BLOOD CANNON!

The featurette video you’ll find below reveals how Ready or Not 2‘s human explosions are crafted, with more blood, guts, and advanced technology at play for this next installment.

“In the first one, it was like a bag full of goo. And they just blew it up,” Weaving explains. “This one, it’s like a giant corkscrew thing.” Filmmakers Radio Silence detail, “They built this incredible rig that’s connected with a bunch of hoses and tubes to this pressurized air canister that would allow blood to fly out of it in random directions by turning the fins.”

“There’s no shortage of blood here,” Kathryn Newton promises.

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come opens in theaters March 20 via Searchlight Pictures.

Meagan Navarro wrote in her review for Bloody Disgusting, “More is more in Ready or Not 2. Bigger stakes, larger playing field, a higher (and more gruesome) body count, and even double the protagonists. It’s all designed to deliver maximum crowd-pleasing fun.”

Picking up moments after the all-out attack from the Le Domas family in the first Ready or Not movie, Grace (Samara Weaving) discovers she’s reached the next level of the nightmarish game — and this time with her estranged sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) at her side. Grace has one chance to survive, keep her sister alive, and claim the High Seat of the Council that controls the world. Four rival families are hunting her for the throne, and whoever wins rules it all.

Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, Néstor Carbonell, David Cronenberg, Elijah Wood, Kevin Durand, Olivia Cheng, Varun Saranga, and Daniel Beirne also star.

The horror-comedy sequel is once again directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett of Radio Silence and written by Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy.

The post ‘Ready or Not 2: Here I Come’ Exclusive Featurette – How New Blood Cannons Make for a Gorier Sequel appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Radio Silence directing duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett spoke to THR about the alternate cut of the slasher saga’s fifth installment.

“There were two cuts of that movie,” Bettinelli-Olpin reveals. “There was the one that exists and everyone has seen, then there was another cut where the first half was totally different. It was just a very shortened version of the first half of the movie, and that was the studio cut at the end of the day.”

“What they valued about the movie was very different from what we valued about the movie at the end of the day,” says Gillett.

“This keeps coming up for us [in post-production],” Bettinelli-Olpin notes. “The things that we love the most in anything we make are usually the things that have the biggest target on them in the edit to cut. They’re the things that are a little off-kilter and offbeat.”

“And they may seem inessential,” Gillett adds.

“The nutshell version is we tested both of them, and because the second half was the same in each one, they both tested extremely similar,” Bettinelli-Olpin recalls. “But when you went into the details of it — and more than anything, when you watched the reactions — people who saw the cut that exists had a great time.”

He continues, They talked about it in an excited way on a character level. With the other version, they were like, ‘Yeah, it was cool. I liked it.’ But there was no energy behind it, and they weren’t attaching to any of the characters. They didn’t really care. So that really helped us get our version into theaters.”

“If people are not familiar with the data from that preview process,” Gillett explains, “you get extremely granular information about what people like, what people didn’t, how people responded to the characters, how people respond to certain scenes. And that is where it was clear that one cut was scoring much higher than the other.

“It was a very bizarre and very scary situation. You go into that game knowing that if you lose, you lose. So there was a lot of anxiety, and you stake your taste in so many ways on the outcome of that process. It was a rough couple weeks.”

The filmmakers’ cut proved to be successful, revitalizing the iconic horror franchise with a $137 million worldwide gross.

Radio Silence’s Ready or Not 2: Here I Come opens in theaters on March 20. They’re currently gearing up for The Mummy 4, due out on May 19, 2028.

The post ‘Scream 5’ – Radio Silence Details Studio-Mandated Alternate Cut appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

“I love doing stunts. I’ve done a lot of stunts, but I broke my back two weeks before we were shooting,” Weaving reveals. We were all freaking out. Friday before we were shooting, the swelling went down. A miracle happened. Mr. le Bail smiled upon me!”

The horror-comedy sequel opens in theaters on March 20 via Searchlight Pictures.

Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett of Radio Silence and writers Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy are back at the helm.

Picking up moments after the all-out attack from the Le Domas family, Grace (Weaving) discovers she’s reached the next level of the nightmarish game — and this time with her estranged sister Faith (Newton) at her side.

Grace has one chance to survive, keep her sister alive, and claim the High Seat of the Council that controls the world. Four rival families are hunting her for the throne, and whoever wins rules it all.

Shawn Hatosy, Néstor Carbonell, David Cronenberg, Elijah Wood, Kevin Durand, Olivia Cheng, Varun Saranga, and Daniel Beirne round out the cast.

Tripp Vinson, James Vanderbilt, William Sherak, and Bradley J. Fischer produce.

The post ‘Ready or Not 2: Here I Come’ Featurette Highlights Scream Queens Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, Sarah Michelle Gellar appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

“They invited me onto set when they were filming the scene on the train, they had someone dressed up as Grace in the background, which was really cool,” Weaving told Deadline. “And Avery Plewes, the costume designer, did Scream as well with them.”

Weaving continued, “We put me in an outfit as a little homage to it as well. The yellow dress that I was in, it’s yellow because of the Chucks, and it’s a turtleneck and tight, kind of like the wedding dress. And then I had like a bun similar to the opening of Ready or Not, so there were little hints of it.”

Weaving and Radio Silence reunite on Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, out March 20 via Searchlight Pictures.

Picking up moments after the all-out attack from the Le Domas family, Grace discovers she’s reached the next level of the nightmarish game — and this time with her estranged sister Faith at her side.

Grace has one chance to survive, keep her sister alive, and claim the High Seat of the Council that controls the world. Four rival families are hunting her for the throne, and whoever wins rules it all.

Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, Néstor Carbonell, David Cronenberg, Elijah Wood, Kevin Durand, Olivia Cheng, Varun Saranga, and Daniel Beirne round out the cast.

Weaver’s other upcoming films include Over Your Dead Body, in theaters April 24, and Carolina Caroline, due out later this year.

The post How Samara Weaving’s ‘Scream VI’ Wardrobe Paid Homage to ‘Ready or Not’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Good question, and one that the Halloweenies are asking themselves again (see our 2022 ranking), now that they have to factor in both 2023’s Scream VI and this past month’s Scream 7. There are a few changes, to be fair, but also a number of hot takes that might leave you huffing and puffing for air. Sadly, they did not rank the killers again. Next time!

Stream the whole conversation below or subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, RadioPublic, Acast, Google Podcasts, and RSS. New to the Halloweenies? Catch up with the gang by revisiting their essential episodes on past franchises such as Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Scream, The Evil Dead, Chucky, Alien, Universal Monsters, and more.

This year? Hellraiser AND The Omen.

You can also become a member of their Patreon, The Rewind, for hilariously irreverent commentaries (e.g. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Gremlins, Child’s Play) and one-off deep dives on your favorite rentals (e.g. Saw, 28 Days Later, Manhunter, Near Dark). Each month promises something new and unexpected from the wildest corners of the genre.

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As star Samara Weaving explains, Ready or Not 2 “picks up right where we left off” — with Grace on the steps, covered in blood, smoking a cigarette — before continuing to expand the world and its mythology.

“We have an insane death within the first five minutes of the film,” says Elijah Wood. “It sets the tone for where the film’s gonna go from there.”

The horror-comedy opens in theaters on March 20 via Searchlight Pictures.

Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett of Radio Silence and writers Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy are back at the helm.

In the film, Grace discovers she’s reached the next level of the nightmarish game — and this time with her estranged sister at her side. Grace has one chance to survive, keep her sister alive, and claim the High Seat of the Council that controls the world. Four rival families are hunting her for the throne, and whoever wins rules it all.

Kathryn Newton, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, Néstor Carbonell, David Cronenberg, Kevin Durand, Olivia Cheng, Varun Saranga, and Daniel Beirne round out the cast.

Tripp Vinson, James Vanderbilt, William Sherak, and Bradley J. Fischer produce.

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is rated R for “strong bloody violence, gore, pervasive language, and brief drug use.”

The post ‘Ready or Not 2: Here I Come’ Featurette Previews “Insane” Sequel appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Directing duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett (Scream 5-6, Ready or Not), collectively known as Radio Silence, opened up to EW about about how the “dream project” came to be.

“It’s just really, really beautiful and scary and sweeping, and it’s awesome,” Gillet said of the script, written by David Coggeshall (Orphan: First Kill).

Bettinelli-Olpin added that it “had all of the heart and the character that you could hope for.”

He continued, “I don’t think Brendan and Rachel are getting involved unless they love that script, and what they read, I think they really liked. And it’s a good script. It’s gonna be fun to make.”

“It’s not lost on us that we are inheriting now another truly wonderful franchise,” noted Gillett. “We just are so humbled and so grateful to get to continue on.”

The pair credit producer William Sherrick with making it happen after the subject of The Mummy came up while they were working together on the set of Abigail.

“William’s always way ahead of us,” Gillett explained. “Matt and I, what we’re doing next is we’re finishing the day, we have eight setups, and William’s always talking about the next thing. And he was like, ‘Hey, I think I’m gonna get us Mummy.'”

He continued, “In our heads, we’re going, ‘That’d be fucking crazy. There’s no way William’s gonna pull it off.’ Cut to, we’re finishing Abigail, and we’re meeting with Dave Coggeshall, the writer, and we’re designing a pitch.”

A remake of the classic Universal monster movie, The Mummy was released in 1999 and grossed $422.5 million worldwide. It was followed by The Mummy Returns in 2001 and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor in 2008.

Weisz was recast with Maria Bello in the third installment. When asked if they consider part 3 canon to the new movie, Bettinelli-Olpin replied, “Well, Rachel is in this one.”

“That should answer the question for you,” Gillett added.

The latest installment in the action-adventure horror-comedy franchise is due out on May 19, 2028 via Universal.

Radio Silence’s Ready or Not 2: Here I Come opens in theaters on March 20, while The Mummy Returns heads back to the big screen on March 27 in celebration of its 25th anniversary.

The post ‘The Mummy 4’ Has “All the Heart and Character You Could Hope For,” Says Radio Silence appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

After kicking off February with the flawed Michael Crichton adaptation Sphere (listen), batshit 90s Drew Barrymore flick Doppelganger (listen), and the 10th anniversary of Robert Eggers’ debut The Witch (listen), we’re closing out the month with a modern fave: Scream VI (2023).

In Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett‘s second Scream film, sisters Sam (Melissa Barrera) and Tara Carpenter (Jenna Ortega) have moved to NYC to make a fresh start. As Sam undergoes therapy to deal with her killer urges, Tara pretends that nothing is wrong by throwing herself into College life. But as the pair, plus returning players Chad and Mindy Meeks-Martin (Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown), will soon discover, there’s a new Ghostface – or Ghostfaces – stalking them through the Big Apple’s bodegas, subways, and parks.

With the help of intrepid reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), newly minted FBI agent Kirby (Hayden Panettiere), and local detective Wayne Bailey (Dermot Mulroney), can the Core Four survive their second round with a killer(s)? Chad really doesn’t want to get stabbed again.

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, and RSS.

Episode 375: Scream VI (2023)

Grab your ladder because we’re headed to NY to ride the subway with the Core Four in Radio Silence’s sequel to the requel, Scream VI (2023).

Obviously this is a megasized episode because we have *thoughts.* Thoughts on the killers, thoughts on who survives, thoughts on the best chase sequences and how much (or little) each character gets to do.

Plus: an absent Sidney, the return of Skeet Ulrich, the Stab shrine, and all of those homages to Scream 2. Who gives a fuck about movies?!

Cross out Scream VI!

Coming Up Next: We’re kicking off March with a celebration of the 30th anniversary of Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar’s feature film debut, Thesis (1996).

P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for over 457 hours of Patreon content including this month’s new episodes on Hannibal Season 3 Episodes 1 & 2, Whistle, The Strangers: Chapter 3, Sam Raimi’s Send Help, a new audio commentary on 10 Cloverfield Lane and our continuing coverage of Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House (2018) on the Requel tier.

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“We never read a draft of any version of Scream 7 that we were going to do because we had left to do Abigail before that,” Bettinelli-Olpin explains to EW.

He continues, “The thing that we had in our minds for Scream 7 was sort of like, ‘How hard can we go with this?’ It was the thing that we talked a lot about. For us, it was always this idea of, Scream VI is like a secret feel-good movie, Scream 7‘s going to fuck you up. That was as much as we ever got to.”

Gillet comments, “Given that we expanded the sort of scope of the story by going to New York, the other thing that we had talked about — just Matt and I, by the way; it wasn’t a conversation with the writers — was, ‘How do you do the opposite for 7?’ Like, shrink it down and make it this ultra-contained, almost continuous, minute-to-minute thing.”

He adds, “But outside of our own stupid idea, we weren’t privy to any plan beyond just, ‘There’s gonna be another one.'”

Radio Silence went on to helm Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, while Scream 7 was directed by Kevin Williamson (writer of Scream, Scream 2, and Scream 4). Incidentally, Guy Busick co-wrote both projects.

In the film, when a new Ghostface killer emerges in the quiet town where Sidney Prescott has built a new life, her darkest fears are realized as her daughter becomes the next target. Determined to protect her family, Sidney must face the horrors of her past to put an end to the bloodshed once and for all.

Meagan Navarro wrote in her review, “There are enough thrills and chills injected, at least until its abysmal finale, to signal that there’s a faintly beating pulse buried somewhere under the mess.”

The #1 movie in the country, Scream 7 had the highest grossing opening weekend in the franchise’s 30-year history with $64.1 million at the domestic box office.

The post “Scream 7’s Going to F-ck You Up” – Radio Silence Detail Their Unmade Sequel appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

“Having stepped into Scream, our radar for jumping into another franchise is that it has to feel special,” Gillett tells Empire.

Gillett adds that the script, written by David Coggeshall (Orphan: First Kill), “really does that. It is very beautiful and sweeping and scary and fun.”

Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz are expected to reprise their roles as Rick and Evie for the fourth installment, which sources indicate is not a reboot but rather a sequel that disregards the events of the third movie.

“The one I wanted to make is forthcoming,” Fraser previously said of the project. “I’ve been waiting 20 years for this call. Sometimes it was loud, sometimes it was a faint telegraph. Now? It’s time to give the fans what they want.”

A remake of the classic Universal monster movie, The Mummy was released in 1999 and grossed $422.5 million worldwide. It was followed by The Mummy Returns in 2001 and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor in 2008.

As for their own properties, Radio Silence imagines that Ready or Not could continue beyond Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, which hits theaters March 20.

“It does feel like there are a bunch of little corners that other stories could exist in,” Bettinelli-Olpin teases. “We don’t have any specific plan to explore anything, but there’s definitely room to tell another story in this world.”

The post ‘The Mummy 4’ “Has to Feel Special,” Says Radio Silence: “It Is Beautiful and Sweeping and Scary and Fun” appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The horror-comedy sequel opens in theaters on March 20 via Searchlight Pictures.

Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett of Radio Silence and writers Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy are back at the helm.

Picking up moments after the all-out attack from the Le Domas family, Grace (Weaving) discovers she’s reached the next level of the nightmarish game — and this time with her estranged sister Faith (Newton) at her side.

Grace has one chance to survive, keep her sister alive, and claim the High Seat of the Council that controls the world. Four rival families are hunting her for the throne, and whoever wins rules it all.

Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, Néstor Carbonell, David Cronenberg, Elijah Wood, Kevin Durand, Olivia Cheng, Varun Saranga, and Daniel Beirne round out the cast.

Tripp Vinson, James Vanderbilt, William Sherak, and Bradley J. Fischer produce.

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is rated R for “strong bloody violence, gore, pervasive language, and brief drug use.”

The post New ‘Ready or Not 2: Here I Come’ Trailer – Samara Weaving Is Back for Round 2 in March appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Watch the trailer for Ready or Not 2: Here I Come below!

Samara Weaving is joined this time around by a killer cast including Kathryn Newton (Abigail), Sarah Michelle Gellar (“Dexter: Original Sin”), Shawn Hatosy (“The Pitt”), Elijah Wood (“Yellowjackets”), and even horror master David Cronenberg!

Ready or Not 2 opens in theaters April 10, 2026.

Here’s the official synopsis: “Moments after surviving an all-out attack from the Le Domas family, Grace (Samara Weaving) discovers she’s reached the next level of the nightmarish game — and this time with her estranged sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) at her side. Grace has one chance to survive, keep her sister alive, and claim the High Seat of the Council that controls the world. Four rival families are hunting her for the throne, and whoever wins rules it all.”

Néstor Carbonell, Kevin Durand, Olivia Cheng, Varun Saranga, and Daniel Beirne also star.

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett are back to direct for Searchlight Pictures with a script by original Ready or Not writers Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy.

The first film in 2019 followed a young bride (Weaving) as she joined her new husband’s rich, eccentric family in a time-honored tradition that turned into a lethal fight for survival.

Samara Weaving teases that the sequel is “so unhinged, absolutely cooked. Those sicko writers came up with a way in that’s somehow both a natural progression and very surprising.”

It’s double or nothing in Spring 2026…

The post ‘Ready or Not 2: Here I Come’ Official Trailer – The Sadistic Game Levels Up in Spring 2026 appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Ready or Not: Here I Come opens in theaters April 10, 2026!

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett tell PEOPLE that Ready or Not 2 “goes hand in hand with the first in an unexpected yet seamless way.” The directors continue, “It’s exciting to see Grace get into a new fucked-up situation that deepens her story and her character, and we wanted to make sure that this movie wasn’t just more of the same.

“We put a ton of love into this movie to make it a worthy sequel that we’re hoping fans of the first movie — and people who are getting to know Grace for the first time — will really love.”

Samara Weaving teases that the sequel is “so unhinged, absolutely cooked. Those sicko writers came up with a way in that’s somehow both a natural progression and very surprising.”

Samara Weaving is back, starring in Ready or Not 2 alongside Kathryn Newton (Abigail), Sarah Michelle Gellar (“Dexter: Original Sin”), Shawn Hatosy (“The Pitt”), Néstor Carbonell (“Shogun”), Elijah Wood (“Yellowjackets”), and horror master David Cronenberg!

Kevin Durand (Abigail) is also featured in the sequel’s cast.

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett are back to direct for Searchlight Pictures with a script by original Ready or Not writers Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy.

The first film in 2019 followed a young bride (Weaving) as she joined her new husband’s rich, eccentric family in a time-honored tradition that turned into a lethal fight for survival.

The post ‘Ready or Not 2’ – First Images of Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, David Cronenberg & Sarah Michelle Gellar! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Both Brendan Fraser and franchise co-star Rachel Weisz are coming back for The Mummy 4, with Radio Silence duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett (Scream, Ready or Not) directing the first installment in the adventure-horror franchise since 2008!

The Hollywood Reporter details in their report, “One source describes the project as not a reboot, but rather a sequel that would disregard the events of the third movie.”

David Coggeshall (Orphan: First Kill) wrote the screenplay for the new movie.

Before Tom Cruise was cast in a similar role as part of Universal’s failed “Dark Universe,” it was of course Brendan Fraser who was the lead of The Mummy franchise, starring as the heroic Rick O’Connell in The Mummy, The Mummy Returns and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor between 1999 and 2008. Fraser led the films to massive box office success, a level of success that the Tom Cruise-led reboot just wasn’t quite able to achieve more recently.

The post ‘The Mummy 4’ – Radio Silence Directing Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz in Long-Awaited Sequel! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Man Vs. will be produced by Radio Silence (Scream, Ready or Not), with Radio Silence co-founder Justin Martinez (V/H/S/Beyond) directing the survival creature feature.

In the film, “Betrayed and left to die in an unforgiving Rocky Mountain winter, an injured gold rush miner (Gallner) must use everything at his disposal to survive the elements, wild animals and a looming, ancient danger far more terrifying than anything he could imagine.”

Martinez said in a statement, “Man Vs. has everything I love in a survival movie and takes it to another level. Kyle has written a fantastic creature feature and I’m excited to bring it to life for the world.”

Shane Kelly, Mister Smith Entertainment SVP of sales & acquisitions adds, “We are looking for sheer excellence and originality in the genre films that we take on, and Kyle’s wild vision for Man Vs. is exactly that. With Justin at the helm and surrounded by the producers of some of the most original horror fare in recent memory, this is going to be a must-see theatrical thrill ride.”

Producers include Roy Lee (Weapons) and Steven Schneider (Insidious) for Spooky Pictures; Chad Villella (Ready or Not); and Stephen Braun and Ross Putman for Bee-Hive Productions (Sacramento). Executive producers are Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin for Radio Silence (Scream), Ben Ross (Late Night with the Devil) and Josh Goldbloom (V/H/S/Beyond).

Justin Martinez directed the segment “Live and Let Dive” in V/H/S/BEYOND, as well as “10/31/98” in the original V/H/S. He also directed two segments in anthology Southbound.

Martinez was recently a visual effects artist for Damien Leone’s Terrifier 3.

The post Kyle Gallner Writing and Starring in Monster Movie ‘Man Vs.’ for Producers Radio Silence appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Angourie Rice leads the thriller as “Alice (Rice), a brilliant but troubled physicist who attempts to heal her trauma by using time travel, but gets caught in a twisty, cat-and-mouse game of murder and violence in New York City.”

Character details are under wraps for Fox, but the actor will also serve as executive producer.

McGuinness is directing from her own script and producing alongside Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett for Radio Silence.

Finn Bennett, Lukas Gage (Companion), Eric Nam, Jordan Ladd (Death Proof), Erika Henningsen (The Four Seasons), Kathleen McNenny (Morning Glory), Ana Yi Puig (Goosebumps), Eric Cheung (Dexter: Resurrection), Jerrod Haynes (Native Son), Hanna Hall (The Virgin Suicides) and newcomer Vera Briseño also star.

Henningsen, McNenny, Briseño, and Cheung previously starred in the original short film.

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The subversive mockumentary is produced by Tyler Friesen with Radio Silence – the team behind the most recent films in the Scream franchise, Scream and Scream VI.

Drawing inspiration from Christopher Guest-style comedies like This is Spinal Tap and found footage classics like The Blair Witch Project, Found Footage: The Making of the Patterson Project will be released in theaters by Vertical on June 20 and digitally on June 24.

Watch the official trailer below and read on for everything you need to know!

Directed by Max Tzannes, Found Footage: The Making of the Patterson Project is a mockumentary horror film about a budding filmmaker’s attempt to produce a found footage movie about Bigfoot. Through the eyes of an esteemed French documentary crew, the story follows his unlikely band of misfits as they struggle to keep the production afloat on a shoestring budget.

All the while, mysterious and sinister occurrences begin to unfold behind the scenes, blurring the lines between movie magic and real life.

As the shoot days get longer and scarier, the filmmakers quickly learn that they’ve stepped into a very real and very terrifying found footage film of their own.

Brennan Keel Cook (The Pale Blue Eye), Chen Tang (Mulan), Erika Vetter (Somebody I Used to Know) and Dean Cameron (Straight Outta Compton, Summer School) star.

For more information, check out the film’s website at ThePattersonProject.org – a blog dedicated to uncovering the truth of what really happened up in Camp Nelson on the set of Chase Bradner’s film (click around for all sorts of secrets and scares). Or try calling 1-(844)-PAT-PROJ, The Patterson Project’s missing persons hotline. The representative seems a little off…

Max Tzannes and David San Miguel co-wrote the mockumentary’s screenplay.

The post ‘Found Footage: The Making of the Patterson Project’ – Radio Silence-Produced Mockumentary Finds Bigfoot [Trailer] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Samara Weaving is back, starring in Ready or Not 2 alongside Kathryn Newton (Abigail), Sarah Michelle Gellar (“Dexter: Original Sin”), Shawn Hatosy (“The Pitt”), Néstor Carbonell (“Shogun”), Elijah Wood (“Yellowjackets”), and horror master David Cronenberg!

The sequel’s official title? Ready or Not: Here I Come!

Watch the cast announcement video below, which features all of the above names. And according to Deadline, Kevin Durand (Abigail) will also be starring in Ready or Not 2.

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett are back to direct for Searchlight Pictures with a script by original Ready or Not writers Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy.

“We’re thrilled to be returning to the world of Ready or Not with Samara,” said Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett, “and so excited to work with this immensely talented cast and the incredible artists across every department joining the Ready or Not family.”

Searchlight’s Matthew Greenfield adds, “We’re beyond excited to make another film with the phenomenal Radio Silence. We get to go on another ride with the amazing Samara Weaving, mix in awesome new voices, and bring audiences a fresh take that’s every bit as twisted and fun as the first one. This is for those who’ve been waiting, and those who didn’t see it coming.”

The first film in 2019 followed a young bride (Weaving) as she joined her new husband’s rich, eccentric family in a time-honored tradition that turned into a lethal fight for survival.

The post ‘Ready or Not 2’ Cast Announce Includes Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Cronenberg! [Video] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Kate Hollowell is directing, with Hollowell also rewriting a script from Liz Benham. Amblin is producing alongside Chad Villella, with Benham also executive producing the film.

Plot details are unfortunately not being revealed at this time, so we have no idea if this will end up being a horror project at all. But we’ll be sure to keep you posted as we learn more.

Kate Hollowell will be making her feature debut with Something Murdered, having previously directed music videos and short films including Sundance winner Say Hi After You Die.

Under the Radio Silence umbrella, Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin are the filmmakers behind Ready or Not, Scream, Scream VI and Abigail. Chad Villella was formerly a member of the Radio Silence filmmaking collective, but he left the outfit earlier this year.

The post Kate Hollowell Directing ‘Something Murdered’ for Amblin; Radio Silence Producing appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Newton joins returning star Samara Weaving in the sequel from Searchlight Pictures.

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett are back at the helm with a script by original Ready or Not writers are Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy.

The first film followed a young bride (Weaving) as she joined her new husband’s rich, eccentric family in a time-honored tradition that turned into a lethal game with everyone fighting for their survival.

Tripp Vinson, James Vanderbilt, Bradley J. Fischer, and William Sherak produce the sequel, with Busick, Murphy, Chad Villella, Tara Farney, and Greg Denny serving as executive producers.

Searchlight VP of Production Richard Ruiz and Creative Executive Cornelia Burleigh are covering the project for the studio, reporting to Co-Heads of Production and Development DanTram Nguyen and Katie Goodson-Thomas.

A genre darling, Newton’s credits also include Freaky, Lisa Frankenstein, Paranormal Activity 4, and “Supernatural.”

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Radio Silence’s Matthew Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (Scream, Scream VI, Ready or Not) have signed on to direct the meta series.

Created by Daisy Gardner (“The Goldbergs,” “South Park”), who serves as as showrunner, the project will be produced by Tornante (“BoJack Horseman,” “Undone”).

The official logline reads: “After wrapping the final Twilight film, Taylor Lautner vanished from the spotlight. Fans speculated, tabloids theorized—but the truth is wilder than fiction. Taylor wasn’t just taking a mental health break. He was preparing for his real calling… Taylor Lautner: Werewolf Hunter.

“Playing himself, Taylor is drawn into a secret society of werewolf trackers who need his unique expertise. As he navigates his double life—Hollywood actor by day, supernatural warrior by night—Taylor must wrestle with the ultimate irony: fighting the very creatures that made him famous.

“Between saving the world, reviving his career, and falling in love, he faces the ultimate question—what happens when your biggest role becomes your greatest enemy?”

Lautner, Bettinelli-Olpin, Gillett, and Gardner will executive produce with Adam Londy (“How I Met Your Father”) of Tornante and Tarik Kanafani, who served as Lautner’s assistant on the last two Twilight films.

Lautner, of course, became a household name for playing Jacob Black — a descended in a long line of shapeshifters who was capable of taking the form of a wolf — in all five films of the Twilight saga.

Radio Silence are currently developing Ready or Not 2 with Samara Weaving and working on a biopic about paranormal DJ Art Bell starring Paul Giamatti.

The post ‘Twilight’ Star Taylor Lautner is a ‘Werewolf Hunter’ in Meta Series from Radio Silence appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The site notes that the package comes courtesy of the Radio Silence team (Ready or Not, Scream, Abigail), with Amazon and Warner Bros. among those currently interested.

Deadline details, “The pitch is a biopic about the late paranormal DJ Art Bell, who would broadcast his radio show from his home studio 65 miles west of Las Vegas, fielding unscreened telephone calls in a five-hour show on KNYE-FM called Coast to Coast.”

“Guests would offer up eyewitness stories on Bell’s show about alien encounters, past lives, time travel and more X-Files-like situations,” Deadline’s article this week continues.

The aforementioned podcast Chinwag similarly features Paul Giamatti and co-host Stephen Asma covering the very same topics, so this project is very much in the actor’s wheelhouse.

Sam Chalsen and Nelson Greaves are writing the screenplay for the film project.

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett are the two key figures behind Radio Silence, with the duo also currently working on a sequel to Ready or Not with Samara Weaving set to return.

Producing the film project is Sophie Cassidy, the head of 2.0 Entertainment, and Jeff Katz, includes the announce. “Katz started his career in talk radio and began chasing rights to the Art Bell project with Cassidy while they worked on The Pope’s Exorcist. He eventually worked with the city government of Pahrump, NV, Bell’s hometown, to build a relationship with and earn the support of Bell’s business partner Karen Jackson, as well as Bell’s family.”

The post Paul Giamatti and Radio Silence Team for Biopic on Paranormal Radio Host Art Bell appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The news was announced by Radio Silence at a Searchlight screening for their 2019 fan-favorite film. Production and release info will be announced at a later date.

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett directed Ready or Not. In addition to Samara Weaving, the cast included Adam Brody, Mark O’Brien, Henry Czerny, and Andie MacDowell.

The first film introduced a mythology wherein the wealthy Le Domas family has made a deal with the devil, one that requires them to take part in bizarre – and deadly – wedding night traditions. There’s much that can be done with the premise going forward, even if the first movie ended with Weaving’s Grace massacring the family and burning down their estate.

The sequel announcement likely doesn’t come as a shock, as Weaving recently confirmed she was interested in continuing. Weaving told ComicBook.com, “I’m all in. I think we’re all in, I don’t know. I think we’re all in. I don’t know if we’ve had our blood handshake, but pretty much. We’ve done the spit handshake, but we haven’t cut each other’s hands and rubbed our blood together.”

As for what keeps bringing her back to the genre, Weaving recently told us, “Horror people are just cool. You guys, it’s a different vibe; it’s a different breed. And I just love that tone; I love horror.”

Ready or Not directors Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin had explained to Entertainment Weekly earlier this year, “Ready or Not 2 is getting figured out. What we can say is that there is a script that is an absolute fucking banger. And however it gets made, and in whatever capacity we are helping get it made, we are so excited that it’s happening.”

Gillett and Bettinelli-Olpin are on a roll since their 2019 hit, with the filmmaking duo following Ready or Not with Scream, Scream VI, and this year’s Abigail.

VP of Production Richard Ruiz and Creative Executive Cornelia Burleigh will be overseeing the sequel for Searchlight Pictures, reporting to Co-Heads of Production and Development DanTram Nguyen and Katie Goodson-Thomas. Producers on part 2 are Tripp Vinson, Bradley J. Fischer, William Sherak, James Vanderbilt. EPs are Chad Villella, Tara Farney.

The post Samara Weaving and Radio Silence Are Officially Back For ‘Ready or Not 2’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Martinez, one of the founders of the filmmaking collective known as Radio Silence, has been with the franchise since the start, having co-directed and handled VFX on the segment “10/31/98” on V/H/S. The filmmaker/VFX artist lent his VFX talents to the last three entries of the franchise and served as VFX supervisor on V/H/S/85 and V/H/S/99. For V/H/S/Beyond, Martinez conceived of his intense segment’s story with writer Ben Turner and makes his solo V/H/S directorial debut, putting his VFX and anthology experience to thrilling use.

The segment sees a group of friends embark on a skydiving trip to celebrate a birthday, only for an alien invasion to send the plane crashing into an orange grove. It’s only the start of the extraterrestrial insanity, with “Live and Let Dive” escalating the insanity and potent jump scares. 

Bloody Disgusting spoke with Martinez about his highly entertaining and suspenseful contribution to the latest entry, where the filmmaker broke down everything from the short’s conception to production. Consider this your warning: plot spoilers ahead.

There’s no question that even conceptually, “Live and Let Dive” makes for an ambitious effort. The entire short is set in broad daylight, leaving nowhere to hide when it comes to the aliens and the level of VFX required. That meant that while Martinez came up with the concept long ago, he wasn’t sure it would work.

He explains, “I’ve had this in the back of my mind for quite a while; it’s been years. I love found footage, and I’m always trying to find the next thing to do in found footage. I’ve always had this idea to do something in the skydiving space because they’re always recording. They always have cameras on their heads. I mean, skydiving is already terrifying. So, plenty of bad things can happen. But to take that and just elevate it.”

“I didn‘t know if it would be aliens or what because I love doing creature things. I always imagined I would do some sort of creature movie with the skydiving format, and V/H/S came along and we were trying to figure it out. And obviously, this one’s sci-fi themed. So, I leaned into, well, let’s do something with aliens.“

“There are a lot of pieces to this one,“ he continues. “It was a very ambitious project from the beginning. Even after the pitch, I was a little scared to pitch it because I knew how hard it would be, so I kept it in my back pocket for a while. I pitched another idea and then came back around to this when that idea wasn’t really working. The producers and Shudder, their jaws dropped, and they’re like, ‘Can you do that?‘ The first thing I thought of was, ‘Well, I can do all the VFX.’ Can we produce it, you know, we’re going to need an airplane. At the time, it was set in a cornfield. So you know, we need to find a cornfield.”

Of course, the final version doesn’t take place in a cornfield at all, but an orange grove. Production timing prompted a location shift, but that quickly proved fortuitous for Martinez.

He details, “You know, it’s funny. I feel like I lucked into that location because, yes, it was a cornfield initially in the script, and we were having a difficult time finding a cornfield. Corn just doesn’t grow at that time of year. It came down to the wire. We’re at the point now where we need to shift location ideas. They were shooting ‘Stork‘ out at this location called RSI. I went out there. They just so happened to have these orange groves, and I knew what I was trying to achieve with the cornfield was the idea of this being a daylight thing. I need to find a way to hide aliens in the daylight, you know. That’s why corn existed for me. I just need a location that matches that.

“We got to that orchard, and I looked around. It felt right, right away, because this is different. It felt different. I also knew I needed to throw a rock at an alien in the script, and I was like, there are no rocks. And I saw an orange. I said, we’re throwing an orange at an alien. I shouted it out, and everyone started laughing. I’m like, no, I am serious. We are throwing an orange at an alien. This is going to be amazing. And it just rolled from there.”

One crucial key to ensuring Martinez could deliver on his daunting, ambitious short was planning as early as possible. The filmmaker tells Bloody Disgusting, “Those were the big questions early on; how are we going to get some of these elements together? I jumped in early on designing the alien because I knew that even from my own criticisms, VFX and CGI are really tough in this format, especially if it’s going to be a daylight thing, and so I needed to give it my best shot. I wanted it to look as practical as possible.

“I started early. I actually started designing the alien last November just to try to find the shape. Then, I couldn’t land on anything. I asked around to find out what everyone thought of when they thought of an alien, like what scared them about aliens. Ultimately, talking to Brad Miska was instrumental in this design. I reached out to him to get his ideas, he sent me so many great references. The biggest thing was that he reminded me to watch Fire in the Sky again. I watched that last scene, and seeing the aliens have a human skin tone and a human feel, I was like, this is it. I need to lean into this. I don’t want to go full-on humanoid or anything. I always like things that are creepy. So, I felt like I needed to do my twist, and I literally did that. I just twisted the legs one day to see what that would look like, and it was disturbing. I get both sides. You know, your standard grays with a really weird thing that I love mixed together.”

“Live and Let Dive“ gets the adrenaline pumping early, with an intense skydive gone wrong thanks to a collision with aliens. It’s also here where Martinez’s VFX work really shines; there was no actual plane flying during production. While the crew did source a plane for filming, it didn’t leave the ground.

Martinez breaks it down: “There were talks early on when we’re trying to figure it out, can we get actors up there? Can we get a real plane? Producer Josh Goldblum had reached out to an old friend who was a skydiver, and so initially, we were thinking about it. If we shot out in Houston, where he’s based, we could. We could possibly get actors up in the air. Over time, it became a logistic battle, and it became clear that we needed to find a way to get a plane. Get our actors into a plane that isn’t actually in the air so that we can shoot most of these scenes and not be hampered by the fact that we have to fly around in the sky to get them.

“So it ended up being a mix. We got the plane at the last second. Someone had found this plane in, I don’t know, an airplane graveyard in the middle of the Mojave Desert, and it wasn’t a skydiving plane. It came down to the wire to make the decision on it because there was so much work that the production designer would have to do to make this work- the thing had been sitting for at least 30 years in the desert collecting dust. The inside of it was filled with chairs. Skydiving planes don’t have chairs. Basically, the person who owned this thing said, ‘I’ll cut off the wings. I’ll cut off the tail for you guys, and I’ll even hoist it up on a truck, and you can ship it off to your studio or whatever you want.‘ Two weeks before we were going to shoot, I still didn’t have a plane, and we pulled the trigger on that.”

Martinez continues, “My production designer, Jessee Clarkson, came through. He worked over the weekend by himself. I went over the weekend to see what he was doing. He was vacuuming it out. He did everything, pulling chairs out just to get it done because, you know, he only had five days to get this thing ready, and he did. His team did a fantastic job. I was blown away. In fact, I stepped back from initial thoughts of what I thought the plane should look like, and I just gave him the reins. I said, ‘You know what. Just make it whatever you want because you’re doing amazing. He was giving it character. He put stickers. He had people write on the walls, which I highly suggest that people go back and watch the movie just to read some of the written messages that are on the walls of that plane because it’s really fun.

How do you conclude a story that starts on such an energetic note? “Live and Let Dive“ closes out its pulse-pounding ride with an electric jolt of a jump scare, one that slows the pacing down just enough to ensure maximum fear. Martinez reveals the secret to nailing this moment.

“I decided to make all the moments that you see the alien, especially initially, very fast,“ Martinez reveals. “So it’s just like, ‘whoa, this is terrifying. What was that?‘ Because it doesn’t take long for your brain to register what you just saw. I didn’t need to have the thing up on frame for more than like eight frames at times. I leaned into that. As the story progressed, I got more comfortable with showing the alien off, but I also knew that once I started showing the alien, I needed to go even bigger. Because we had just fallen from the sky, right? I’m always trying to top that through this movie, as the biggest, craziest thing you could imagine has already happened about 7 minutes into the movie.

“I started going bigger with what the alien would do, like having things come out of its wrists, shocking people, and blowing their skin off. I need to go big with everything, and I also had told my buddy Ben Turner, who wrote it with me, that I want to make everyone think there’s only one alien in the whole movie the entire time. So everything that we write has to have in mind that we will only ever see one alien so we’re setting up that jump scare in the truck. It was absolutely the right idea.”

The post ‘Live and Let Dive” – How That Intense ‘V/H/S/Beyond’ Skydiving Segment Came Together [Spoiler Interview] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Here are seven things I learned from the Abigail commentary…

1. Abigail’s father is revealed early in the film.

Matthew Goode as Abigail’s vampiric crime lord father, Kristof Lazaar, is treated as a reveal in the final act, but Eagle-eyed viewers will notice a framed picture of him on a nightstand in Abigail’s bedroom.

The filmmakers point out that Abigail’s other nightstand features photos of Bettinelli-Olpin’s cats and Gillett’s dog.

2. 10 minutes were cut after a preview screening.

Feedback after Abigail‘s first preview screening resulted in 10 minutes being cut to tighten the pacing, which the filmmakers concede was a good note. Among the changes, two early scenes between Joey and Abigail were combined: one with Joey loosening Abigail’s handcuffs and another in which they make a pinky promise.

“Once we sort of identify the threat and live with the characters and establish the audience’s hopes and fears of what could happen to them, we needed to get to the next big, cool, fun, juicy moment that everyone’s waiting for,” Shawyer elaborates.

“To get to that, we received a note, and it worked to combine. What it did for the scene is actually give the scene more dynamic range and let you feel more of the emotions and bond with these two characters in that moment.”

3. An old-school camera technique was used to create impact.

The bloodshed in Abigail combines practical effects with digital enhancements, but an old-school camera technique was employed for when Dean smashes his face on the stairs.

“That face hitting the step is actually a shot that was shot in reverse and then played in reverse in the movie,” says Gillett. “There are a few instances of that to create a real sense of impact.”

He also notes that Angus Cloud’s co-star in the scene, a mouse named One, had strawberry jam put on its cheeks to achieve his “amazing performance.”

The same reverse-shot technique was utilized when Melissa gets stuck to the library pillar.

4. Dancing played a smaller part in the original script.

The dance element was “a very small texture in the script originally.” The film was to start in a dance studio before the production gained access to Dublin’s Bord Gáis Energy Theatre for the opening sequence.

As Gillett describes, “We were like, ‘Oh, great! That’s a giant theatre. Well, that changes the tone and the vibe. Okay, cool. Let’s lean into that.’ And then meeting Alisha and finding out that she can dance and is really good. We were like, ‘Let’s lean into that. Let’s use that to our advantage.'”

The serendipity continued with Kathryn Newton, who has classical dance training. Bettinelli-Olpin pondered, “What if Abigail’s having fun, and it’s more than just a moment and we make a dance out of it ’cause Kathryn can do it? That led to the idea of, ‘We should see Alisha puppeting her.’ And then we were like, ‘Well, let’s get a song.'”

The puppeted dance was choreographed to an electric guitar version of Swan Lake to echo the opening scene. The filmmakers chose Danzig’s “Blood and Tears” in post-production, and Shawyer edited the scene to match the new music after the studio and Danzig signed off on the use of the song.

5. Dan Stevens’ character name is a reference to horror filmmakers.

Dan Stevens’ character’s real name is a reference to horror filmmakers Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett, for whom he starred in The Guest and with whom Radio Silence collaborated on V/H/S.

“Frank’s real name, Detective Adam Barrett, is a shout-out to Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett, friends of ours who worked with Dan Stevens in The Guest, which is one of our favorite movies of theirs,” notes Bettinelli-Olpin.

Gillett follows it up with the thought on everyone’s mind: “When is The Guest 2 coming out? That is the question.”

6. The library set required an elaborate lighting setup.

While most of the mansion was shot on location at Dublin’s Glenmaroon House, the library was a set that allowed for an elaborate lighting setup.

“There is a huge lift outside of the library set with this massive 8-foot by 8-foot mirror, and we’re pushing I think it’s probably an 8K [light] into the mirror, and then that mirror is aimed back through the window,” Bettinelli-Olpin explicates.

“Aaron [Morton, director of photography] talked so much about the science and how the shadows would only look right if the source of light was further away, and the only way to get the source of light far enough away was to have a light on the ground and a mirror in the sky bouncing light through that window. It, to his credit, looks fucking amazing.”

Bettinelli-Olpin adds, “Aaron also poked a giant hole in our vampire lore when he was like, ‘Isn’t moonlight just reflected sunlight? So why can they go out at night? Which, again, we chose to ignore,” they chuckle.

7. The SAG-AFTRA strike benefited the production.

Abigail was one of the many productions halted due to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, but it actually benefited from the break. Impressed with the footage shot before the strike, Universal provided additional resources for the climactic battle between Joey and Frank.

Gillett explains that the studio was “really excited about the potential of this third act showdown. So they gave us more resources, more time when we got back to just really blow the roof off.

“We brought in this amazing stunt guy and second unit director named Wade Allen. He and his team at 87North helped us build and kind of redesign a bit of this final bit of choreography just to feel like it was less kick-and-punch-and-fight and more like it had the character beats within it that could only be in this movie.”

Allen, the husband of actress Annabeth Gish, earned two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Stunt Coordination for his work on Barry.

Abigail is available now on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital.

The post ‘Abigail’ – 7 Things We Learned from the Blu-ray Commentary Track appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

In the video you’ll find below, star Kathryn Newton invites you into the Abattoir, a bloody pit of festering corpses. This is where Abigail and her vampire father dump their victims after draining them, with Newton’s character ending up going for a nasty midnight swim in the film.

How did the Abigail team bring the disgusting body pit to life? And what was it like for Kathryn Newton to be submersed in their gruesome pool of death? Watch the featurette below.

The at-home release features exclusive bonus content, including…

• Deleted & Extended Scenes
• Gag Reel
• ‘Blood Bath’
• ‘Hunters to Hunted’
• ‘Becoming a Ballerina Vampire’
• ‘Directing Duo: Matt & Tyler’
• Feature Commentary with Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett and Editor Michael P. Shawver

Meagan Navarro wrote in her positive review here on Bloody Disgusting, “Radio Silence’s ballerina vampire movie is a bloody blast.” Her review continued, “It’s savagely inventive in terms of its vampiric gore, offering a thrill ride with sharp, pointy teeth.”

And yes, Abigail takes place in the same universe as Radio Silence’s Ready or Not!

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.”

From Radio Silence—the directing team of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett behind the terrifying modern horror hits Ready or Not, 2022’s Scream and last year’s Scream VI—comes a brash, blood-thirsty new vision of the vampire flick, written by Stephen Shields (The Hole in the Ground, Zombie Bashers) and Guy Busick (Scream franchise, Ready or Not).

Abigail stars Melissa Barrera (Scream franchise, In the Heights), Dan Stevens (Gaslit, Legion), Kathryn Newton (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Freaky), William Catlett (Black Lightning, True Story), Kevin Durand (Resident Evil: Retribution, X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and Angus Cloud (Euphoria, North Hollywood) as the kidnappers and Alisha Weir (Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical, Darklands) as Abigail.

The post ‘Abigail’ Exclusive Bonus Features Clip: Kathryn Newton Invites You into the Bloody Body Pit appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The release will feature exclusive bonus content, including…

• Deleted & Extended Scenes
• Gag Reel
• ‘Blood Bath’
• ‘Hunters to Hunted’
• ‘Becoming a Ballerina Vampire’
• ‘Directing Duo: Matt & Tyler’
• Feature Commentary with Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett and Editor Michael P. Shawver

Abigail is currently available on Digital at home beginning at $19.99 to rent.

Meagan Navarro wrote in her positive review here on Bloody Disgusting, “Radio Silence’s ballerina vampire movie is a bloody blast.” Her review continued, “It’s savagely inventive in terms of its vampiric gore, offering a thrill ride with sharp, pointy teeth.”

And yes, Abigail takes place in the same universe as Radio Silence’s Ready or Not!

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.”

From Radio Silence—the directing team of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett behind the terrifying modern horror hits Ready or Not, 2022’s Scream and last year’s Scream VI—comes a brash, blood-thirsty new vision of the vampire flick, written by Stephen Shields (The Hole in the Ground, Zombie Bashers) and Guy Busick (Scream franchise, Ready or Not).

Abigail stars Melissa Barrera (Scream franchise, In the Heights), Dan Stevens (Gaslit, Legion), Kathryn Newton (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Freaky), William Catlett (Black Lightning, True Story), Kevin Durand (Resident Evil: Retribution, X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and Angus Cloud (Euphoria, North Hollywood) as the kidnappers and Alisha Weir (Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical, Darklands) as Abigail.

The post ‘Abigail’ Bites into Blu-ray with Deleted Scenes and Audio Commentary appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Deadline reports that the action-comedy package has landed at Amazon MGM Studios, with Radio Silence directing the film and Andy Samberg (Palm Springs) starring.

Deadline notes, “Plot details are unknown other then it being described as an action comedy.”

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett will be directing for Radio Silence.

Andrew Lanham is writing the screenplay and will also executive produce.

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett will produce with Andy Samberg and Ali Bell via The Lonely Island’s banner Party Over Here, along with Radio Silence’s Chad Villella, and Silk Mass’s Jon Silk. Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone will also produce for Party Over Here.

The post ‘The Robots Go Crazy’ – Radio Silence Directing Action Comedy for Amazon MGM Studios appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The project had originally been described as a “reboot,” but filmmakers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett had described it as more of a “requel.” Unfortunately, the pair revealed to Comicbook.com that they’re no longer developing the requel and have parted ways with the project.

Gillett told the outlet, “We are not, unfortunately. I think titles like that bounce around for a while and I think they’ve tried to get that out of the blocks a few times. I think it’s just ultimately a tricky rights issue thing. There’s a clock on it and we just weren’t in a position to make the clock, ultimately. But who knows? I think, in hindsight, it feels crazy that we would think we would, post-Scream, step into a John Carpenter franchise. You never know. There’s still interest in it and we’ve had a few conversations about it but we’re not attached in any official capacity.”

Escape from New York was set in 1997. “When the U.S. president crashes into Manhattan, now a giant maximum security prison, a convicted bank robber is sent in to rescue him.”

In Escape from LA, also directed by John Carpenter, “Snake Plissken is once again called in by the United States government to recover a potential doomsday device from Los Angeles, now an autonomous island where undesirables are deported.”

Radio Silence is fresh off of helming gory vampire movie Abigail. It’s the third vampire movie from the Universal Monsters brand in the past year, the film scaring up $34.7 million at the worldwide box office these past few weeks. That gives it a higher worldwide gross than both The Last Voyage of the Demeter ($21.7 million) and Renfield ($26.4 million), and it’s also the most critically successful of the three vampire movies. Abigail also just landed on Premium VOD, so you can watch at home now.

Stay tuned for additional details on the Escape from New York requel, and what’s next for Radio Silence.

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However, as soon as Radio Silence’s anticipated first film was released into the wild, the reactions were mostly negative. Devil’s Due was dismissed as a Rosemary’s Baby rehash but dressed in different clothes; almost all initial reviews were sure to make — as well as dwell on — that comparison. Of course, significant changes were made to Lindsay Devlin’s pre-existing script; directors Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett offered up more energy and action than what was originally found in the source material, which they called a “creepy mood piece.” Nevertheless, too many folks focused on the surface similarities to the 1968 pregnancy-horror classic and ignored much of everything else.

Almost exactly two years before Devil’s Due hit theaters in January of 2014, The Devil Inside came out. The divisive POV technique was already in the early stages of disappearing from the big screen and William Brent Bell’s film essentially sped up the process. And although The Devil Inside was a massive hit at the box office, it ended up doing more harm than good for the entire found-footage genre. Perhaps worse for Radio Silence’s debut was the strange timing of Devil’s Due; the better-received Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones was released earlier that same month. Despite only a superficial resemblance, the newer film might have come across as redundant and negligible to wary audiences.

The trailers for Devil’s Due spelled everything out quite clearly: a couple unknowingly conceives a diabolical child, and before that momentous birth, the mother experiences horrifying symptoms. There is an unshakable sense of been-there-done-that to the film’s basic pitch, however, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett knew that from the beginning. To compensate for the lack of novelty, they focused on the execution. There was no point in hiding the obvious — in the original script, the revelation of a demonic pregnancy was delayed — and the film instead gives the game away early on. This proved to be a benefit, seeing as the directors could now play around with the characters’ unholy situation sooner and without being tied down by the act of surprise.

At the time, it made sense for Radio Silence’s first long feature to be shot in the same style that got them noticed in the first place, even if this kind of story does not require it. Still and all, the first-person slant makes Devil’s Due stand out. The urgency and terror of these expectant parents’ ordeal is more considerable now with a dose of verisimilitude in the presentation. The faux realism makes the wilder events of the film — namely those times the evil fetus fears its vessel is in danger — more effective as well. Obviously the set-pieces, such as Samantha pulling a Carrie White on three unlucky teens, are the work of movie magic, but these scenes hit harder after watching tedious but convincing stretches of ordinariness. Radio Silence found a solid balance between the normal and abnormal.

Another facet overlooked upon the film’s initial release was its performances. Booking legitimate actors is not always an option for found-footage auteurs, yet Devil’s Due was a big-studio production with resources. Putting trained actors in the roles of Samantha and Zach McCall, respectively Allison Miller and Zach Gilford, was desirable when needing the audience to care about these first-time parents. The leads managed to make their cursory characters both likable and vulnerable. Miller was particularly able to tap into Samantha’s distress and make it feel real, regardless of the supernatural origin. And with Gilford’s character stuck behind the camera for most of the time, the film often relied on Miller to deliver the story’s emotional element.

Back then, Radio Silence went from making viral web clips to a full-length theatrical feature in a relatively short amount of time. The outcome very much reflected that tricky transition. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett indeed knew how to create these attention-grabbing scenes — mainly using practical effects — but they were still learning their way around a continuous narrative. The technical limitations of found footage hindered the story from time to time, such as this routine need to keep the camera on the main characters (or see things from their perspective) as opposed to cutting away to a subplot. There is also no explanation of who exactly compiled all this random footage into a film. Then again, that is an example of how the filmmakers strove for entertainment as opposed to maintaining every tradition of found footage. In the end, the directors drew from a place of comfort and familiarity as they, more or less, used 10/31/98 as the blueprint for Devil’s Due’s chaotic conclusion. That is not to say the film’s ending does not supply a satisfying jolt or two, but surely there were hopes for something different and atypical.

Like other big film studios at that time, 20th Century wanted a piece of the found-footage pie. What distinguished their endeavor from those of their peers, though, was the surprising hiring of Radio Silence. Needless to say, the gamble did not totally pay off, yet putting the right guys in charge was a bold decision. Radio Silence’s wings were not completely clipped here, and in spite of how things turned out, there are flashes of creativity in Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s unconventional approach to such a conventional concept.

Radio Silence has since bounced back after a shaky start; they participated in another anthology, Southbound, before making another go at commercial horror. The second time, as everyone knows, was far more fruitful. In hindsight, Devil’s Due is regarded as a hiccup in this collective’s body of work, and it is usually brought up to help emphasize their newfound success. Even so, this early film of theirs is not all bad or deserving of its unmentionable status. With some distance between then and now, plus a forgiving attitude, Devil’s Due can be seen as a fun, if not flawed first exposure to the abilities of Radio Silence. And, hopefully, somewhere down the line they can revisit the found-footage format.

The post ‘Devil’s Due’ – Revisiting the ‘Abigail’ Directors’ Found Footage Movie appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Entertainment Weekly caught up with Ready or Not directors Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin in the wake of those reports, and we’ve now got an update straight from the source.

“It’s getting figured out. That’s what we’ll say: Ready or Not 2 is getting figured out,” Gillett tells EW, confirming last month’s report. “What we can say is that there is a script that is an absolute fucking banger of a sequel. And however it gets made, and in whatever capacity we are helping get it made, we are so excited that it’s happening.”

“I don’t think we knew after making [Ready or Not] that there would be so much story left to tell,” Gillett continues. “We’re so proud of what that first movie is, we’re so proud of what the sequel is. We’re just really excited, and fingers crossed that it gets made.” Bettinelli-Olpin adds, “And with Searchlight and Samara, they’re not gonna let it down.”

The first film introduced a mythology wherein the wealthy Le Domas family has made a deal with the devil, one that requires them to take part in bizarre – and deadly – wedding night traditions. There’s much that can be done with the premise going forward, even if the first movie ended with Weaving’s Grace massacring the family and burning down their estate.

Wikipedia reminds, “The sole survivor of the night, Grace walks out of the burning manor just as the police arrive. Upon asking her what happened, she simply replies: in-laws.”

The post ‘Ready or Not’: Radio Silence Filmmakers Tease the “Absolute Banger” of a Sequel That’s Taking Shape appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

While that may make for a more conventional watch with fewer surprises, Radio Silence’s ballerina vampire movie is a bloody blast all the same.

The heist-turned-vampire feature begins with the coordinated kidnapping of 12-year-old ballerina Abigail (Alisha Weir), the daughter of a powerful crime lord guaranteed to fetch a hefty ransom prize. Splitting the obscene loot are the six tasked with snatching Abigail from her home and safeguarding her for 24 hours: ex-cop Frank (Dan Stevens), medic and Abigail caretaker Joey (Melissa Barrera), endearing himbo muscleman Peter (Kevin Durand), spunky hacker Sammy (Kathryn Newton), wheelman Dean (the late Angus Cloud), and stoic ex-military gunman Rickles (William Catlett). The group of strangers arrive at their luxury hideout with minimal hiccups, where they’re given the rundown by employer Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito) and forced to give up their phones. Once left to their own devices, it quickly becomes clear that their kidnapping stint comes with job hazards they couldn’t have anticipated.

While the marketing for Abigail may have already revealed the precise threat that this code-named Rat Pack is dealing with, it actually takes a while for the unwitting kidnappers to discover the bloody truth. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett, working from a script by Guy Busick and Stephen Shields, relegate their murderous ballerina to the background for much of the first half to establish the group dynamics and stakes. That’s not a bad thing; Abigail boasts an ensemble cast that makes you want to spend time with them. Early scenes see the six feel each other out, test boundaries, and forge tenuous alliances in acerbically funny ways that make key exposition feel far less tedious than it would in lesser hands. More impressively, this game cast adds depth and pathos to their archetypical roles within the heist and horror.

Barrera’s Joey quickly emerges as the film’s antiheroine for her street smarts and boundless empathy, tasked with the role of the straight man. Joey keeps her cool, as much as possible, even when the horror kicks arrive in full. While Barrera makes easy work of instilling rooting interest and delivering some of the tougher bursts of exposition, she’s often upstaged by Stevens, having a clear blast playing the sleazy but savvy Frank. But Stevens isn’t the only scene-stealer here. Newton, especially through her scene partners, including Cloud, delivers some of the film’s funniest moments with her infectious charisma and witty line delivery. But it’s Durand’s loveable but dumb enforcer that threatens to steal it all, with Peter serving as the butt of many jokes to an unbelievably charming degree. And when Weir finally unleashes her inner monster, her ferocious yet layered portrayal easily establishes the young actor as a star on the rise.

It’s the cast and their memorable characters that carry Abigail far when the build-up adheres to familiar narrative beats. There’s a sense of awareness of the cinematic vampires that have paved the way, with Abigail acknowledging and borrowing from various aspects of the vampire mythos, but the film never attempts to reinvent the wheel. Instead, Abigail just wants you to have a good time seeing its unlucky criminals in over their heads in increasingly deranged and violent ways. Ultimately, a few unexpected narrative turns herald in one of the goriest finales to come along in quite some time: gorehounds, this one is definitely all for you.

The exquisitely detailed production design by Susie Cullen and a heaping helping of viscera and gore from the SFX team bolster a slick production (in more ways than one) that gives this enthusiastic cast plenty to sink their teeth into. Abigail is savagely inventive in terms of its vampiric gore, offering a thrill ride with sharp, pointy teeth. Though Abigail may be too methodical in its steady ramp-up toward full-blown insanity, the brilliant ensemble makes the journey worth it. With an insane commitment to arterial spray, Abigail winds up another crowd-pleaser from Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett. It’s poised to deliver the most fun you’ll have at the movies this year.

Abigail releases in theaters on April 19, 2024.

The post ‘Abigail’ Review – Radio Silence Delivers Another Gory Good Time at the Movies appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

As for those would-be criminals, Bloody Disgusting learned more about the key players in Abigail when invited to set last summer in Ireland.

The first scene observed on set introduced the group, handpicked to kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure. They’ve just arrived at their eerie destination after a successful grab. From the grand staircase in the sprawling estate’s foyer, a commanding Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito) lays out the ground rules of the kidnapping as he takes their cellphones. The group is given fake names corresponding with members of the Rat Pack to preserve their anonymity, with the added horror bonus of telling audiences not to get too attached.

But who are these characters?

Of his intimidating character Lambert and the script, Esposito tells us, “The first couple of pages are really captivating; they were for me when I read them. I went, ‘Wow, what a great set piece in the beginning.’ Then I come into the film, and I’m taking charge and telling people what this job is, which ostensibly is a kidnapping. I have to do that convincingly for the film afterward to work.”

Expect Lambert to be very untrustworthy, as Esposito warns that “there’s a little tinge of him being resentful about” Lambert’s position.

In the scene, Dan Stevens’ Frank appears to be working directly for Lambert as his second in command during this operation. The horror stalwart describes his role within the group, “Because of the nature of this motley group, it initially follows quite classic heist movie tropes where you’ve got the wheels, the getaway driver, and you’ve got the tech girl who’s going to hack the computers, and then you’ve got the medic who’s going to administer the sleeping drugs. Then you’ve got Kevin Durand playing the muscle or whatever. Everyone seemed to have a very, very clear role in this band of criminals. And then there’s Frank, who just seemed to be an asshole. That seemed to be his special skill, really. We could never quite figure out what he was doing there. For all intents and purposes, he was the boss of the group. So maybe that’s it. Maybe bosses are just assholes, I don’t know. But that really seemed to be his special skill. That and cursing frequently. That’s definitely one of his special skills.”

Stevens certainly looks the part of an ex-cop turned mob henchman, and it turns out that he had a lot of input on his character’s design.

He explained, “That was a collaborative effort really with costume designer and directors and myself and just sort of an interesting shopping trip in Dublin one day just to see what we could pull together for him. I think the role originally had been written for a 60-something Italian American, and because of the demands of the role, I guess, or other reasons, they didn’t find somebody of that casting, so they came to me. We had to amend what sort of a cop this guy had been and what his background was. We took particular inspiration from ‘I Think You Should Leave,’ the slicked-back hair. That seemed to make us laugh. So that definitely stayed in from that.”

Immediately distrustful of Frank, a sentiment he reciprocates, is Joey, played by Scream veteran Melissa Barrera. She recounts Joey’s role within the group, “Her specialty and the reason that she’s here actually is because she’s a medic. That’s what her profession is, and she’s here basically to knock the victim, whoever they’re kidnapping, she’s supposed to inject them with a sedative and then make sure that they survive and take care of them. She has an extra sedative in case they need it. That’s her job; she’s the caretaker and the nurse, basically, of the group. But of course, being in the army, she has some skills with weapons and she has some combat training, so we get to see a little bit of that. Not a lot, but I did learn how to properly hold a gun and where the finger’s supposed to be.”

Barrera also gave her character a real name, beyond the moniker Joey, worthy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. 

The actor tells us, “I actually gave her her real name because these characters, the names that you see in the trailer are their ‘names’ that they’re given there because they share their real names, because it’s for safety reasons in case anyone gets caught, they’re given the rat pack names. So, funny story: originally my character’s rat pack name was Sammy, and because of Sam in Scream, they changed it to Joey. I ended up being Joey and Kathryn ended up being Sammy, but I worked with Matt and Tyler to give her a real name, which is Ana Lucia Cruz, and I wanted it to be a reference to Dracula. So Lucy, I named her Ana Lucia, and Cruz as in cross, something that would kill a vampire, that protects you from the vampire. So that ended up being her name.”

Kevin Durand may look imposing in stature, but it quickly becomes clear that his character has a softer side. 

“I play a guy named Peter who is basically a hired muscle for the group,” the Canadian actor shares. “We’ve been hired to kidnap a target, and you realize that the target’s a 12-year-old, and we’re like, okay, this is too easy. We realize that it’s not as easy as we thought. Peter’s always a couple of steps behind, partially because it’s a bit of a language barrier. I’m playing him like he’s from French Canada, who’s a little bit of a skew and trying to catch up. He is not really okay with his line of work, so he drinks heavily.”

The group dynamics will play a vital role in Abigail, with the strangers reluctant to trust each other. That’s less so with Peter, who Durand reveals will quickly develop a bond with another team member. 

“Well, to a certain degree, some of us look out for each other; some of us don’t give a shit,” Durand explains. “Peter really takes a liking to Sammy, played by the amazing Kathryn Newton. So, they have a pretty cool connection, kind of like a brotherly, sibling-type thing. I mean, they don’t know each other.”

The trailer highlights that some characters quickly embrace the vampiric nature of their captive. That’s less so with Peter.

Durand comments, “How does Peter react when things get weird? He doesn’t want to believe it. He’s very Catholic and the idea that vampires actually exist, he’s like, ‘There’s no such thing.’ He doesn’t believe it and then he’s being attacked by the one.”

It’s easy to see why Peter takes a liking to Sammy. Newton brings a vivacious energy to her heavily tattooed hacker character.

Newton says of Sammy, “She’s really kind of privileged and naïve to the stakes that she’s put herself in because I think she comes from a background of nothing really bad happens to her. It might even be created in her head if something’s bad. This is a real shock. But I would argue that she’s the nicest person in the movie. I think that she’s got the best intentions; she is not here to really make any money or care about kidnapping anybody. She’s kind of here just to have a good time.”

Angus Cloud’s Dean serves as the group’s wheelman. The “Euphoria” actor brought an unflappable cool factor to the scene observed as he, along with his new colleagues, handed over their phones. Abigail marks one of his final screen appearances.

The crew’s shooter, Rickles, is played by William Catlett. Catlett walks us through his no-nonsense character, “He’s the one that kind of keeps everything grounded in the film. It’s like a heist film. Then it turns into a horror film. We were just doing EPK where we were up in my bungalow because, just like a slapper, you want to be above so you can see everything until everything goes to shit. But that’s pretty much Rickles.”

Catlett also reinforces that this assembled criminal team is working together for the first time on this kidnapping heist.

“We all just met up, but we were all summoned here by Abigail,” Catlett says. “We’d done something that brought us here. Whatever we did, it’s like payback. We were all supposed to be in this place. We think we’re coming together for one thing, but we were handpicked to be here.”

As for the eponymous vampire child and the vampiric horror? Stay tuned for more on Abigail very soon.

The post ‘Abigail’ – Meet the Criminals Behind the Heist-Turned-Vampire Horror Movie [Set Visit] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Abigail, directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, and written by Stephen Shields (The Hole in the Ground, Zombie Bashers) and Guy Busick (Scream franchise, Ready or Not), transforms a heist movie into a full-blown bloodbath.

That gore was on prominent display last summer when Bloody Disgusting was invited to the set of Abigail, filmed in the birthplace of vampire horror originator Bram Stoker: Ireland. It wasn’t just the sheer volume of fake blood and viscera that was prominently displayed on set, but the glowing praise for the young Irish actor playing the central vampire, Alisha Weir.

Weir’s breakout role as Matilda in 2022’s Matilda the Musical established her talents, but Abigail will showcase even more of the rising star’s range as she taps into her feral side and does her own stunts. That the film hinges on a 12-year-old-vampire meant that Weir was a very lucky find for directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett.

Gillett says of casting Weir, “I mean, it was incredible. That that was our big source of anxiety going into this project. Just on the page, Abigail is such a character, and so much of what’s fun and interesting about the tone of the movie is about the contrast between this innocent child becoming this horrific monster. I think we knew that the movie was only going to be as good as that role was because it’s the linchpin of everything. So yeah, I mean, there was a lot of anxiety in the casting process.

“We met Alisha and it was just, I mean, we were immediately texting each other, ‘She’s so incredible.’ Just the way she presents herself, she’s so kind and so curious. Then she did a live read on that Zoom and there was a moment in the side that she was reading where she has to switch from young girl to this jump scare vampire moment. She committed so fully to it on the Zoom that it actually scared us on a Zoom audition.”

Though Weir is no stranger to extensive choreography thanks to her role in Matilda, she was excited to tackle her first horror movie and the technical challenges that brought.

“Yes, it’s definitely very different,” Weir reflects. “In Matilda, there was lots of dancing, but Matilda wasn’t really in loads of the group scenes. She was mainly just overlooking it. But in Abigail, I got to go on point and do lots of stunts, which was incredible. I hadn’t really trained in ballet. I’d done a little bit of it, but I had never gone on point, so I was so excited about that. Then the stunts were completely different, and there were lots of rehearsals for the stunts as well as there was a big fight scene at the end of the movie that took a good few weeks of rehearsing for it.

“But it was so much fun, and I kept coming home to my mom and my dad and I was telling them the things that I was doing and my sisters, and I think they were looking at me like, ‘Are you sure you’re definitely flying and punching and kicking?’ When they’ve seen the film then they believed in me, but it was amazing and I had so much fun getting to do all the stunts.”

Before Abigail reveals her monstrous side, she forges a bond with the kidnapper designated as the team’s caretaker of sorts: Melissa Barrera’s Joey. Barrera and Weir walk us through the relationship between their characters in the film.

Barrera explains, “I think it definitely starts off that Joey feels really bad that they kidnapped a little girl. She didn’t know that they were going for a little girl. She says that she wouldn’t have done it if it was a little girl. I don’t know if that’s 100% true. I think she lies to herself a lot because a lot of people that are questionable people that have made a lot of mistakes in life, I think lie to themselves to make themselves feel better. But she definitely needs this money, or she thinks that she needs this money to be able to become a better person and a better mom.

“So, at the beginning, I think she’s trying to resist forming any connection with Abigail. She’s trying to be as professional as she can, even though she feels very protective of the girl. But then Abigail is so stinking cute and sweet and starts wanting to get to know Joey. So, immediately, you can see how Joey is going into mom mode and assure her that she’s going to be okay and that she’s going to take care of her. That happens really quickly.

“That’s why when Abigail turns, Joey feels so shocked and betrayed and angry, because she understands that she’s been played and that it was all acting from Abigail. She feels really angry, and she thinks that they just have to do whatever. She doesn’t care about this vampire little girl anymore. She’s like, ‘We just have to survive.’ But then, when push comes to shove, I think their connection was real in a way. Underneath everything, there is a bond that when they do that pinky promise, there is some connection that is underneath it all. That’s the crux of the movie: Joey is trying to figure out what’s real, what’s not, what feelings of empathy to listen to, and whether she’s still being played or not with Abigail. That’s the back and forth that conflicts her throughout the movie.”

Weir responds to Barrera, “Well, yeah. I think you really said it there. Abigail does really take advantage of Joey, but there always is that bond, and I think that’s because she finds out that you have a son as well, and that really helps. That’s where the bond starts and where it unfolds. Although she is there on a mission and why she is there, although however many times she’s done this, she’s never really made a connection with someone that’s been kidnapping her, so I think that’s why in the movie, she doesn’t expect that and, although she is putting on an act and playing a different part, she still is in some ways being honest about some things that she says to Joey.”

If you’ve seen the trailer, you know that Abigail’s not your typical fanged vampire; she’s got a mouthful of shark-like chompers. While navigating an American accent with large vampire teeth presented another challenge for Weir, it turns out there was an unexpected perk to playing a vampire.

“It was very different putting on the teeth,” Weir says. “Well, first of all, I had an American accent, so that was different. Then I had the teeth, and then I had to practice working with the teeth and then with the accent as well. Then there were also stunt teeth, and the stunt teeth were bigger than them. They were like gum shields; they took up your whole mouth. I had to practice working in them. It was crazy, but it was so much fun, and I loved wearing the teeth. When I took them out, my teeth felt super weird. They felt really light because they were so heavy. But it was so much fun. It’s not every day, and it’s not that you can say a lot that you’ve played a ballerina vampire that wears teeth that’s covered in blood and has eye contacts.” 

Barrera adds, “Alisha was obsessed with, there was a black sugary thing that they put in her mouth to make her tongue dark, and it tasted like candy, right?”

“It was so good,” Weir exclaims.

“She would be constantly asking for more and more and more of it,” Barrera teases. “They would be like, ‘Alisha, your tongue is still dark.” She’d be like, ‘No, a little bit more.'”

As for the vampire lore here, expect Gillett and Bettinelli-Olpin to play around with it with a knowing wink.

Gillett elaborates on this, “One of the really fun things for us was taking a monster like a vampire, if everybody has a notion of what that is, depending on the movies you were raised on and what you consider to be canon. Borrowing a little bit from the Scream movies, we loved this idea of taking all of those rules, throwing them all in one bucket, and then having characters within the story itself call those things out and have a conversation with themselves and the audience about how they feel about those rules, what can kill a vampire, all of the different offshoots of vampire lore. And I think that for us there was just a real opportunity for invention in that. It was really every step of the way, I think, just about taking what you might think or consider familiar and then finding a new and fun way to interpret it and flip it on its head and hopefully keep audiences surprised and guessing.

“Then you have a great cast that gets to deliver all of those really wacky fun lines and ground all of the craziness of the vampire lore. I will say that just in terms of its connection to Dracula’s Daughter, I know that there was an inkling of that in the early Stephen Shields draft. I think that was definitely part of, I think what was cool in the hook of the movie. I think for us, we wanted to take that idea and to find a way to untether it from the rules of maybe an existing character or an existing franchise to create something that didn’t have maybe quite the same sort of small sandbox size that I think you can run into with franchises or characters like that. And kudos to Universal. They let us just swing wild. They kept telling us the weird stuff is working, so you might as well just make it weirder. Keep going. And we did.“

Which brings us to one of Abigail’s overarching mysteries: her father.

Bettinelli-Olpin is careful to dodge any spoilers when pressed about Abigail’s dad.

“Man, that’s a tough one,” Bettinelli-Olpin answers. “He’s a big part of the story. His presence is the shadow that just goes over everything that’s happening. We talked about him a lot in the Keyser Söze sense. He’s almost at this point more of an idea than a person. Again, like what Tyler was saying, the great thing about working on this movie and working with Universal on it is that they wanted to make sure that we didn’t feel restricted by anything that had come previously, that this could be a wholly original idea. We got to really run with that. Just using that character throughout the movie as a way to apply pressure to our characters and their own interpretation of that character is really where the fun lies in the movie and in the way that creates a pressure point for everybody, including Abigail. I don’t want to say too much because I don’t want to give anything away, but we had a lot of fun with it.”

Weir also touches on Abigail’s parentage by teasing her arc: “At the start of the movie, obviously she’s acting like this innocent sweet girl, and that’s why she looks so young, but she’s definitely not the age she looks. She’s been around for a long time, and she’s been living for a long time, and she’s been doing this for a very, very long time and tricking people. She’s become an expert and a pro at it now. Her relationship with her father, he is mysterious and there is so many twists and turns in this movie. I don’t want to give anything away about who her father is, but she definitely has a history with her father and a past with her father that you will find out during the movie. But he is an underworld crime boss, and he is mysterious.”

Abigail is only in theaters on April 19, and tickets are on sale now.

The post ‘Abigail’ – Universal Introduces Unforgettable New Monster in 12-Year-Old Vampire Ballerina [Set Visit] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Releasing April 19, Abigail has been rated “R” for “Strong bloody violence and gore throughout, pervasive language and brief drug use.”

And it’s not hard to see why, either: Abigail is gearing up to deliver an epic blood bath.

Watch the new trailer below, where Abigail promises to eat you alive.

In the film, “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.”

From Radio Silence—the directing team of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett behind the terrifying modern horror hits Ready or Not, 2022’s Scream and last year’s Scream VI—comes a brash, blood-thirsty new vision of the vampire flick, written by Stephen Shields (The Hole in the Ground, Zombie Bashers) and Guy Busick (Scream franchise, Ready or Not).

Abigail stars Melissa Barrera (Scream franchise, In the Heights), Dan Stevens (Gaslit, Legion), Kathryn Newton (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Freaky), William Catlett (Black Lightning, True Story), Kevin Durand (Resident Evil: Retribution, X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and Angus Cloud (Euphoria, North Hollywood) as the kidnappers and Alisha Weir (Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical, Darklands) as Abigail.

The film produced by William Sherak (Scream franchise, Ready or Not), Paul Neinstein (Scream franchise; executive producer, The Night Agent) and James Vanderbilt (Zodiac, Scream franchise) for Project X Entertainment, by Tripp Vinson (Ready or Not, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island) and by Radio Silence’s Chad Vilella (executive producer Ready or Not and Scream franchise). The executive producers are Ron Lynch and Macdara Kelleher.

The post ‘Abigail’ 2nd Trailer Promises To Eat You Alive appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

That gore was on prominent display last summer, when Bloody Disgusting was invited to the set of Abigail, filmed in the birthplace of vampire horror originator Bram Stoker: Ireland.

Abigail, written by Stephen Shields (The Hole in the Ground, Zombie Bashers) and Guy Busick (Scream franchise, Ready or Not), transforms a heist movie into a full-blown bloodbath. A group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, only to find themselves locked inside with an actual monster.

The production transformed the Glenmaroon House, a historic Edwardian house originally owned by Arthur Ernest Guinness, into a creepy gothic estate filled with eerie taxidermy and decomposing things. A tour of many of the set pieces and rooms within the estate made it abundantly clear that there will be absolutely zero restraint when it comes to the carnage. One room, in particular, was coated floor to ceiling in viscera and blood, with entrails dangling from every surface, so much so that stepping foot into the room required extreme care to avoid trailing footprints in the sticky red stuff. 

That the monster in question wreaking havoc on the unsuspecting criminals, Abigail (Alisha Weir), happens to present as an unassuming child ballerina, gave the filmmakers the ability to push the gore as far as they could.

Director Tyler Gillett explains, “I think that we always want to challenge ourselves and find new ways to shock and entertain ourselves. I also think that because of, I mean, look, I am going to steer it back to just who our monster is. Because you have this 12-year-old vampire at the heart of this movie, it just meant that we could go harder and more extreme and have more fun with the gore and the violence because you have her as a young girl, as the other guardrail. The further away those things get for us, the more fun and absurd the tone of the movie gets. And the more fun and absurd it gets, the more your characters have to interact with and respond to. I think a little bit, too, knowing that there are certain sequences that feel a little bit inspired by some of our other work that maybe we didn’t have the time or budget to do right; we definitely are revisiting some fun things in this movie in bigger and more extraordinary ways. But it gets pretty wild. I mean, there were days on set where you couldn’t walk anywhere because it was just a bloodbath. That, for us, is just super fun. You build these incredible elaborate sets, and then by the end of the shoot, it’s like, wow, what a crazy transformation.”

SFX Supervisor Paul Byrne of Scorpion FX reinforces the filmmakers’ aim to do as much practically as possible. “They were totally into as much in camera, real effects as they could get, which we gave,” Byrne tells Bloody Disgusting. “And they were brilliant with their information, their detail. I hadn’t worked with two directors before, and I was wondering what it would be like, but they were amazing. They were very, very humble people. I think the whole crew felt that spirit that they brought to the set wash over it.”

Byrne and his team had their work cut out for them with Abigail. Not just with the arterial spray but with the gruesome gags and kills.

He explains, “It was gag after gag; there just was never enough blood in the country, so we were kept very busy throughout, needless to say. I don’t think anything could be too big, really. So, we quickly learned as we went along just to go big or go home. The guys were brilliant, though. We constantly brought them tests and tests after tests and videos, and we literally invented the wheel again. We made new gags, stuff that didn’t exist and have never existed before, just to service what they wanted.”

But just how much blood are we talking about here?

“Good question. We pretty much wiped out the blood supply in Ireland, I think,” Byrne answers with a smile. “And then we started going to other countries. We went through a lot of blood and we used a lot of different materials, non-toxic non-staining versions for other scenes that you’ll see, but there are various other substances and things that we had to make from scratch without getting too gross.”

One of the gross moments the SFX Supervisor is referring to is a scene glimpsed in the film’s trailer that sees Kathryn Newton’s Sammy stuck in a pool filled with decomposing bodies. For her part, filming that sequence turned out to be one of the most physically challenging experiences of her career so far.

Newton explains, “This movie has been, oh my gosh, it’s the most traumatic experiences I’ve ever had in the best coolest way. Grossest, most difficult physically. I just did a Marvel movie, and this is way harder, way, way harder. Like physically. I had to do something where I jump into a pool of bodies and, yeah. Look, it was so thick that I sat and didn’t move. That’s how gross and thick it was. All I was thinking about was whether this was good or not, but I was really thinking about the audience. That was the only thing getting me through. It was comfortable, but I was sweating so much. I was so hot because I was working so hard. They did everything to make me comfortable. Everyone did their job, but it was just like, oh my God.

“It was so gross. It was heavy. The blood, the screaming, it looked so, so good. But I was really thinking because it was so hard, physically you can get stuck there just as a person, you’re like, oh my gosh, I’m tired. So, what I thought of before every take was, don’t go watch this movie and be disappointed that you didn’t kill it because you’re already doing this anyway. So, that was the best scene I’ve ever shot. A hundred percent the most iconic scene I’ve ever done in my career, probably. I hope. That’s the goal. When you do something scary like that, you just want it to be so frightening that it stays with the audience.”

While the sequence will no doubt be a showstopper, Paul Byrne teases that it’s far from the only grisly horror moment horror fans can look forward to; though he remained tight lipped.

Byrne teased “I think there are other ones that will pop up in the movie that would’ve been probably more challenging from an effects point of view. They all had their differences, but in this world, that’s what makes it interesting. But the pool scene is certainly going to be an interesting one to see with it.”

As for his personal favorite gag? “I think they’ll know it when they see it,” the SFX Supervisor teased.

The gore in Abigail won’t just thrill and delight the gorehounds; it’ll act as a release valve for the suspense and intense horror, too.

Gillett tells us, “We talk a lot about how building a scare and building a joke are really very similar. They’re all about just creating tension. I think for us, the thing that we tried to replicate is, and I think the magic trick of our tone is that if you have characters and actors who are playing their reaction to things in an incredibly grounded way, then the more extreme and absurd things get the scarier things get, but also the funnier things get because you have real people reacting to an extraordinary situation in a way that any of us might react. It allows you, I think, to continue to turn the volume up. As the movie ramps up, everyone gets more and more grounded in their response to things. I mean, it’s such a tool in this movie because there are so many conversations in this movie about who Dad is and the real tension of that. Then of course, a reaction to the extreme and ridiculous ballerina vampire that’s chasing them around. But everyone treats it like their lives are in peril at every moment. I think that’s what allows it to both be fun and funny and thrilling and scary at the same time.”

Dan Stevens, who plays the crooked Frank, is no stranger to horror. The actor also cites Abigail as his goriest horror film yet.

Stevens recalls, “It was definitely the bloodiest thing I’ve ever worked on in terms of volume, just pints of red syrup that were required on set and just the fun and the ridiculousness of that as well. And just if somebody vomits up blood, it’s like, okay, we’ve all seen that, but what if it lasts for a minute? And just how good is that? And just sort of having real fun with that. I think for Matt and Tyler as well, who have a great sense of humor and are really, really fun, lovely, funny guys. When we weren’t shooting gory scenes, we were just generally quoting ‘I Think You Should Leave‘ but just looking for the fun elements in those things.

“I find that, again, going back to horror filmmakers, how there’s a sort of dialogue between them sometimes so across it’s like, “Oh, well, if we are going to do this, there’s been a thousand vampire movies, there’s been a thousand heist movies, but what can we do that’s a little bit different? One of those things is definitely bringing in more blood, and there’s just sort of a real absurdity to this. I don’t know if it amps up each time. I feel like it does throughout the movie. Again, I would have to see it track, but each time somebody gets turned, each time somebody gets defeated, it just gets more and more insane to the point where, yeah, there’s this epic final showdown that really results in an event. The whole crew gathered around to watch it, like a fireworks display or something, this mad culmination. It was really fun.”

Melissa Barrera, who plays Abigail’s babysitter Joey, further describes just how bloody things were on set. She tells us, “This is the most blood that I’ve ever experienced in a movie. I’ve seen some movies that have a bathtub full of blood or someone comes out of blood and in the water. But talking about the amount of blood that you see throughout a movie, this is probably up there with the most. I don’t know; it’s a lot. We had blood cannons; that says a lot. Matt and Tyler have this joke even from the last movie, even from Scream VI, they always ask for more spritz, more sweat, and more blood. You already know hair and makeup will get you ready, and I would always tell them, ‘They’re going to want more.’ And they were like, ‘Okay. Well, we can always add more, but we can’t take away, so we have to go.’ And it was always more. Always, they always want more. It’s never enough for them.

“Although it did get to the point where I was so bloody that my face just looked like nothing, like eyes and teeth, so they had to take away by the end because it was all one color and the blood was so dark on my face, that they actually had to wipe some off to give it some dimension. Because they were like, ‘You’re basically nothing. There’s basically nothing.’ And my hair was also bangs and shorter, so it was like a blob of darkness and eyes. They did have to wipe some off. It was a first for them and for me.”

Stay tuned for more from our Abigail set visit.

The post ‘Abigail’ – Radio Silence Gets Extreme with Vampire Gore and Bloody Violence [Set Visit] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Get ready for an absolute blood bath, sometimes literally, to get unleashed in the Radio Silence-directed Abigail. Also cue the blood canons: Bloody Disgusting can exclusively debut Abigail‘s “It’s a Blood Bath!” featurette, giving a closer look at the carnage in store.

Releasing April 19, Abigail has been rated “R” for “Strong bloody violence and gore throughout, pervasive language and brief drug use.” And it’s not hard to see why, either.

Watch the featurette below to get a peek at the actors getting coated in blood and discussing the gory challenges of making Abigail.

In the film, “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.”

From Radio Silence—the directing team of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett behind the terrifying modern horror hits Ready or Not, 2022’s Scream and last year’s Scream VI—comes a brash, blood-thirsty new vision of the vampire flick, written by Stephen Shields (The Hole in the Ground, Zombie Bashers) and Guy Busick (Scream franchise, Ready or Not).

Abigail stars Melissa Barrera (Scream franchise, In the Heights), Dan Stevens (Gaslit, Legion), Kathryn Newton (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Freaky), William Catlett (Black Lightning, True Story), Kevin Durand (Resident Evil: Retribution, X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and Angus Cloud (Euphoria, North Hollywood) as the kidnappers and Alisha Weir (Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical, Darklands) as Abigail.

The film produced by William Sherak (Scream franchise, Ready or Not), Paul Neinstein (Scream franchise; executive producer, The Night Agent) and James Vanderbilt (Zodiac, Scream franchise) for Project X Entertainment, by Tripp Vinson (Ready or Not, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island) and by Radio Silence’s Chad Vilella (executive producer Ready or Not and Scream franchise). The executive producers are Ron Lynch and Macdara Kelleher.

Expect to learn a lot more about Radio Silence’s vampire movie very, very soon.

The post ‘Abigail’ – It’s an Absolute Blood Bath in Exclusive New Featurette appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Releasing April 19, Abigail has been rated “R” for “Strong bloody violence and gore throughout, pervasive language and brief drug use.” And it’s not hard to see why, either.

Watch the featurette below to get a peek at some of the gore, courtesy of a deep indoor swimming pool.

In the film, “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.”

From Radio Silence—the directing team of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett behind the terrifying modern horror hits Ready or Not, 2022’s Scream and last year’s Scream VI—comes a brash, blood-thirsty new vision of the vampire flick, written by Stephen Shields (The Hole in the Ground, Zombie Bashers) and Guy Busick (Scream franchise, Ready or Not).

Abigail stars Melissa Barrera (Scream franchise, In the Heights), Dan Stevens (Gaslit, Legion), Kathryn Newton (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Freaky), William Catlett (Black Lightning, True Story), Kevin Durand (Resident Evil: Retribution, X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and Angus Cloud (Euphoria, North Hollywood) as the kidnappers and Alisha Weir (Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical, Darklands) as Abigail.

The film produced by William Sherak (Scream franchise, Ready or Not), Paul Neinstein (Scream franchise; executive producer, The Night Agent) and James Vanderbilt (Zodiac, Scream franchise) for Project X Entertainment, by Tripp Vinson (Ready or Not, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island) and by Radio Silence’s Chad Vilella (executive producer Ready or Not and Scream franchise). The executive producers are Ron Lynch and Macdara Kelleher.

The post Kathryn Newton Highlights Pool Full of Bodies in ‘Abigail’ Set Featurette appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.