TV
‘The Faceless Lady’ – Eli Roth Presents an Immersive Episodic Virtual Reality Horror Series [Trailer]
Crypt TV, ShinAwiL, and Eli Roth, in partnership with Meta, have announced their first scripted VR episodic series The Faceless Lady, presented by Eli Roth, written by Jerome Velinsky and directed by John William Ross (The Birch). This six-episode series is the first known scripted original VR live action, stereoscopic (3D) series ever produced of its size.
The Ireland-set storyline is inspired by the real life seventeenth century Irish folklore of Lady Margaret Hodnett who is said to haunt Belvelly Castle in Cork stalking visitors through mirrors and reflective surfaces. Adapted for modern day with a supernatural twist, The Faceless Lady follows three couples who have been invited to a medieval castle in Ireland for a weekend competition where they will either win her games or lose their lives.
The first-of-its-kind immersive horror series will premiere in VR with the first two episodes on Thursday, April 4 at 5:00pmPT in Meta Horizon Worlds, bringing scares to a new level. There will be a total of six half-hour episodes, with one episode dropping weekly every Thursday after the premiere.
Attendees can RSVP for the event in Meta Horizon Worlds HERE, where the series will be available in the Creepy Cabin world, which allows users to immerse themselves in haunted experiences and premium horror content while uncovering the mysteries of the haunted cabin.
“Partnering with Meta on VR originals has been an incredible experience, and I can’t wait for fans to enjoy VR horror in series form with ‘The Faceless Lady.’ Seeing the reaction to ‘Trick-VR-Treat’ and ‘Be Mine’ showed what an appetite genre fans have for this medium and how VR users are experiencing horror through the headset,” said Eli Roth. “A VR horror episodic series will scare viewers in a way this medium has never seen before.”
Starring alongside Tara Lee (The Fall) and Staz Nair (Rebel Moon), the cast includes Daisy Jelley (How To Date Billy Walsh), Mei Henri (Hijack), Ugo Onwughalu, Sophie Rebecca-Jones, and Ned Dennehy (Peaky Blinders).
If you’re not able to tune-in to episodes when they premiere in Meta Horizon Worlds, the series will be available to watch on demand in VR on Meta Quest TV. For fans without a Meta Quest VR headset, the first two episodes will be available to watch on Crypt TV’s Facebook page when they premiere in VR.
“We’re calling this XR Television. For the first time ever, we can now produce live-action XR TV shows that look like no live action scripted content before it. Bigger than a movie screen, or even IMAX, the canvas is massive, it is head-to-toe, side-to-side, and in 3D, there’s real depth, you can touch the action, the sound is spatial, you are in the scene,” said Darren Brandl, executive producer for Crypt TV. “This is a big moment for XR. The tech has finally caught up to the promise of the premise and we hope fans will love it.”
The Faceless Lady is produced by Crypt TV in partnership with Meta. The team bringing this immersive format for storytelling to life in VR includes executive producers Jack Davis and Darren Brandl (The Girl in the Woods) for Crypt TV, Eli Roth (Thanksgiving), and Larry Bass and Aaron Farrel of ShinAwiL. VR production services were rendered by Light Sail VR and co-executive producers Robert Watts and Matt Celia.
“The Faceless Lady redefines the horror genre by allowing viewers to experience the series in stereoscopic VR, creating an unparalleled sense of presence and pushing the boundaries of how we perceive and engage with frightening tales,” commented Sarah Malkin, Director of Metaverse Entertainment Content at Meta. “We’re excited to feature this first-of-its-kind 3D VR horror series from Eli Roth and Crypt TV and can’t wait for audiences to immerse themselves in this chilling narrative and groundbreaking technology.”
Published in 2019, Stephen King‘s novel The Institute is getting a TV series adaptation from MGM+, with Deadline reporting today that the project has been given a series order.
Ben Barnes (Shadow and Bone) and Mary-Louise Parker (Weeds) will star.
The Institute comes from director/executive producer Jack Bender (Lost, Mr. Mercedes), writer/executive producer Benjamin Cavell (Justified, The Stand) and MGM+ Studios.
In the eight-episode series, “When 12-year-old genius Luke Ellis is kidnapped, he awakens at The Institute, a facility full of children who all got there the same way he did, and who are all possessed of unusual abilities. In a nearby town, haunted former police officer Tim Jamieson (Barnes) has come looking to start a new life, but the peace and quiet won’t last, as his story and Luke’s are destined to collide.” The website notes that Parker will play “Ms. Sigsby, the charming but iron-willed director of the Institute and a true believer in its awful mission.”
“I’m delighted and excited at the prospect of The Institute, with its high-intensity suspense, being filmed as a series,” King said. “The combination of Jack Bender and Ben Cavell guarantees that the results will be terrific.”
“We are thrilled to have the opportunity to work again with Stephen King. And The Institute, based on his critically acclaimed novel, is an exciting addition to the MGM+ original series slate,” said Michael Wright, head of MGM+. “There is no creative team I would trust more to bring the book to life than Jack and Ben, whose creative vision and love of Mr. King’s voice, will bring this thought-provoking and gut-wrenching story to life, in the engaging, cinematic, and thrilling style MGM+ viewers expect.”
Here’s the novel’s full synopsis, via Amazon:
As psychically terrifying as Firestarter, and with the spectacular kid power of It, The Institute is Stephen King’s gut-wrenchingly dramatic story of good vs. evil in a world where the good guys don’t always win.
In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents—telekinesis and telepathy—who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” Kalisha says. “You check in, but you don’t check out.”
In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute.
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