John Woo is back with a radical reimagining of his own 1989 Hong Kong action classic, The Killer, for which Peacock has just revealed their first trailer ahead of the film’s August 23rd release date.
Woo’s original film, which he both wrote and directed, followed a disillusioned assassin (Chow Yun-fat) as he accepts one last hit in hopes of using the money to restore vision to the singer (Sally Yeh) he accidentally blinded. It went on to become a cult favourite and influential work in the action-thriller canon. Details of the Peacock reimagining are still unknown.
The screenplay for this reimagining comes from 10 Cloverfield Lane duo Matthew Stuecken and Josh Campbell, as well as Eran Creevy and Brian Helgeland.
In 2024’s The Killer, Game of Thrones star Nathalie Emmanuel stars as Zee, a mysterious and infamous assassin known and feared in the Parisian underworld as the Queen of the Dead. But when, during an assignment from her shadowy mentor and handler (Sam Worthington, the Avatarfilms), Zee refuses to kill a blinded young woman (Diana Silvers, Ma) in a Paris nightclub, the decision will disintegrate Zee’s alliances, attract the attention of a savvy police investigator (Omar Sy), and plunge her into a sinister criminal conspiracy that will set her on a collision course with her own past.
With the motorbike/car chase scenes through Paris, the merciless hand-to-hand choreography and even a Church set, we can’t help but be reminded of John Wick 4 – which is very much a compliment.
A24 has just unveiled the first trailer for A Different Man, its darkly funny, psychological fantasy thriller starring Marvel and Fresh‘s Sebastian Stan, which is due to release in cinemas on September 20th.
Also starring The Worst Person in the World‘s Renate Reinsve and Under The Skin‘s Adam Pearson, the film from writer-director Aaron Schimberg centres on Edward (Stan), an aspiring actor with neurofibromatosis who undergoes a radical medical procedure to drastically transform his appearance, in hopes of getting work opportunities. Edward’s new dream face quickly turns into a nightmare however, as he loses out on the lead role in a play based on his life and becomes obsessed with reclaiming what he’s lost.
The genre-bending film blends elements of drama, fantasy, sci-fi, horror, and psychological thriller into a film that’s very much its own, with a truly stellar lead performance from Stan. C. Mason Wells, Owen Kline, Charlie Korsmo and Patrick Wang also star. (Potential spoiler:) Michael Shannon also stars as himself.
Aaron Schimberg writes and directs the pic. A Different Man premiered in January at Sundance Film Festival, before going to screen at the Berlin International Film Festival, where Stan was awarded the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance.
The Terminator franchise is back with Netflix’s upcoming animated reboot, Terminator Zero. Hailing from Japanese animation studio Production IG, best known for 1995’s Ghost in the Shell, the eight-episode series stars Sonoya Mizuno as the voice of resistance fighter Eiko. Though set in the same universe that we know from the films, the series introduces all-new characters.
Terminator Zero takes place across two timelines, “2022: A future war has raged for decades between the few human survivors and an endless army of machines. 1997: The AI known as Skynet gained self-awareness and began its war against humanity.”
Caught between the future and this past is a soldier Eiko (Mizuno) sent back in time to change the fate of humanity. She arrives in 1997 to protect a scientist named Malcolm Lee (André Holland) who works to launch a new AI system named Kokoro (Rosario Dawson) designed to compete with Skynet’s impending attack on humanity. As Malcolm navigates the moral complexities of his creation, he is hunted by an unrelenting assassin from the future (Timothy Olyphant as The Terminator) which forever alters the fate of his three children. Ann Dowd also stars as The Prophet, a philosophical guide for the human resistance.
Terminator Zero debuts on Netflix from August 29th. Watch the teaser trailer below:
The opening film at this year’s Pigeon Shrine FrightFest is Joanne Mitchell’s Broken Bird, an expansion of her 2018 short, Sybil. Mitchell wrote the film alongside Tracey Sheals and her husband, Dominic Brunt. You can check out the artwork and images from the film below…
Synopsis: Sybil is a quiet, creative soul. Her hobbies are taxidermy and poetry. She works in a funeral parlour with the deceased. She likes dead people. They understand her. At just ten years old, she experienced trauma in a tragic accident which took away the family she adored. Now, an aching loneliness prevails in a void which she seeks to fill. But poetry and a vivid imagination provide an escape from the harsh realities of a lonely life. Reality and reason are slipping away from Sybil, and her ‘dark desires’ become more and more insatiable. Her fascination with the dead takes a dark and strange twist. And in a horrific climax of gothic proportions, she finds her own kind of happiness and contentment with the people she keeps as company – dead people.
Sybil is played by Rebecca Calder (Kandahar/Memory) with James Fleet (Four Weddings & a Funeral), Sacharissa Claxton (Avenue 5), and Jay Taylor (Misfits) filling out the cast list.
You can catch Broken Bird at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest on Thursday, August 22nd at 5.30pm before hitting cinemas on August 30th.
We all love (or love to hate, if you also hate fun) the Sharknadofranchise, whose success has spawned its fair share of imitations, including titles like Clownadoand Monsternado – but now, it’s time to prepare the best you can for Wild Eye Releasing’s Catnado.
In Catnado, “The world faces a horrific onslaught of tornadoes, each unleashing hordes of enraged and deadly cats upon humanity! As chaos reigns, a disparate group of individuals have one mission: to stop this feline fury. But against such odds, and with only one life to spare per person, their battle becomes a cat-astrophic struggle for survival. And when the fur flies, it will be a meow-ssacre.”
The horror (?) film stars Erica Rowell Green, Joshua G. Otto, Blair Kelly, Serena Salieri, and Tucky Williams. It being an anthology, it also has a large team of directors: Donald Farmer, Curtis Everitt, Alaine Huntington, Blair Kelly, James M. Myers, Melvin Pittman, Tim Ritter, Jerry Williams, and Logan Winton.
Catnado premiered in 2022 at Horror Film Fest, and is just now being released on VOD and DVD, from October 22nd, 2024. Just in time for some Halloween viewing!
The forecast is positively claw-ful in the official trailer for Catnado, which you can watch below:
The Pigeon Shrine FrightFest line-up was announced yesterday (check here if you missed it), and now we can exclusively reveal the poster and teaser for Video Vision, one of the UK premieres at the eagerly awaited horror event.
Written and directed by Michael Turney, the film stars Andrea Figliomeni and Chrystal Peterson, the film’s teaser will hit a chord with everyone who grew up in the VHS era.
Synopsis:
When an old VCR mysteriously shows up at the digitising facility Video Vision, it starts affecting employee Kibby (Andrea Figliomeni) in strange ways. Meanwhile, an unlikely romance with a trans man (Chrystal Peterson) has Kibby’s head in the clouds until she’s brought to her knees by the supernatural force slowly taking control of her body and mind. When Kibby and Gator investigate the VCR’s origins, they discover she has unwittingly unlocked the dark dimension of Dr. Analog.
Writer/director Michael Turney said: “Whether it’s media formats, gender or the passage of time, Video Vision is a story of transition. The setting is New York City which has often changed but never escapes its history. As the VHS villain Dr. Analog says, “All of time is touching, and I feel you”. If we don’t hold the hand of the past, it will leave us behind in the present. I’m so thrilled to be a part of FrightFest and screen this love story turned techno-nightmare to an audience that appreciates nuanced horror.”
VIDEO VISION will have its UK Premiere at FrightFest on August24th. Find out more atvideovisionmovie.com
Warner Bros. Animation and Paramount have dropped the first trailer for their animated feature, Watchmen Chapter 1, a two-part film based on the classic DC Comics. The alt-history series is a satirical take on the superhero genre in which superheroes, known as costumed vigilantes, have been made illegal.
“October 13th, 1985,” begins Rorschach’s voiceover. “On Friday night, the Comedian died in New York. Somebody knows why. These days, nobody’s safe.” Per Warner Bros.’ brief synopsis, “In an alternate world, the murder of a government sponsored superhero draws his outlawed colleagues out of retirement, into a mystery that threatens their lives and the world itself.”
The impressive voice cast includes Matthew Rhys as Dan Dreiberg, aka Nite Owl, Katee Sackhoff as Laurie Juspeczyk, aka Silk Spectre, Titus Welliver as Rorschach, aka Walter Kovacs, and Michael Cerveris as Jonathan Osterman, aka Dr. Manhattan. Rick D. Wasserman’s The Comedian, Adrienne Barbeau’s Sally Jupiter, Jeffrey Combs’ Moloch, and Geoff Pierson’s Hollis Mason round out the main cast. Corey Burton, John Marshall Jones, Yuri Lowenthal, and Kari Wahlgren are aboard in unconfirmed roles.
Brandon Vietti directs the film from a script by J. Michael Straczynski. The feature will be released via Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment on August 13th, and will later hit Blu-ray on August 27th. Watchmen Chapter 2 is set to be released later this year, though an exact date has yet to be announced.
Jennifer Lawrence’s projects just keep lining up, with news that A24 has optioned Paul B. Rainey’s dark sci-fi comedy graphic novel Why Don’t You Love Me and have tapped Lawrence to star. Robert Funke, best known for his co-creating the dark comedy On Becoming a God in Central Florida, is on board to write the feature adaptation.
Released in 2023, the graphic novel follows a couple struggling with an unhappy marriage. In Rainey’s work, “Claire and Mark are in the doldrums of an unhappy marriage. She doesn’t get out of her bathrobe and chain-smokes while slumped on the couch. Mark has lost track of the days and can’t get the kids to school on time. They’ve lost interest in family and have pizza and Chinese food delivered every night. Mark sleeps on the couch and has trouble remembering his son’s name. He feels like a fraud at work but somehow succeeds. Claire stalks an ex-boyfriend. How could he have left her to this life?
“Claire and Mark are both plagued by the idea that this is all a dream. Didn’t they have different lives? When reports of an imminent nuclear war come on the radio, the truth begins to dawn on them: This is not the life they chose.”
No news yet on who might star opposite Lawrence in the feature, nor who might be tapped to direct. Lawrence will also produce the pic via her banner, Excellent Cadaver. Midsommarfilmmaker Ari Aster, Lars Knudsen and Emily Hildner of Square Peg will also produce Why Don’t You Love Me? Rainey will executive produce.
The wait is over! The line-up for the 2024 edition of Pigeon Shrine FrightFest is here. Taking place between Thursday, August 22nd and Monday, August 26th, the event will take place at its new home, Odeon Luxe on Leicester Square.
As usual, there will be an array of world premieres (WP), UK premieres (UK), international premieres (IP), European premieres (EU), and English premieres (EP) to keep fans of every subgenre happy. You can feast your eyes on the horrors that await below…
6.25pm A Samurai in Time – director: Junichi Yasuda (EU)
Sunday, August 25th
1pm A Samurai in Time
4pm Mermaid Legend
6.40pm From Darkness
Monday, August 26th
3.45pm The Last Podcast
6.30pm Things Will be Different
Festival co-director Alan Jones comments: “FrightFest, the Dark Heart of Cinema, has been beating loud and proud now for an amazing 25 years. An incredible quarter of a century that has seen major challenges and transformations to the global film industry that FrightFest has embodied, embraced and emblazoned. Our past 25 glorious years have shown FrightFest in a state of continuous evolution, something we are determined will never, ever stop. So let the 25th Anniversary FrightFest begin”.
Tickets for Pigeon Shrine FrightFest go on sale on Saturday, July 13th. For more information, head to www.frightfest.co.uk
The festival guest line-up and full details for the Short Film Showcases and other events will be revealed soon. Watch this space!
Paramount Pictures is reportedly in the final stages of closing a deal with Robert Pattinson and Smile filmmaker Parker Finn to tackle a remake of Possession, the 1981 supernatural psychological horror movie from writer-director Andrzej Żuławski.
Finn will write the script, direct and produce via his Bad Feeling banner. Pattinson will produce via his production company, Icki Eneo Arlo. Whether he plans to also act in the film will become clear once the script and schedules have been confirmed. Vertigo Entertainment’s Roy Lee, who produced Zach Cregger’s breakout horror film Barbarian, will also produce.
The original Possession was set in West Berlin and starred Sam Neill as a spy who returns home from the film to his wife (Isabelle Adjani) and son. However, the wife soon asks for divorce and the couple descends into a destructive, toxic cycle that not only includes infidelity and emotional neglect, but spins out into murder, doppelgangers, and a tentacled, alien creature.
The screenplay was written during Żuławski’s own painful divorce from actress Malgorzata Braunek. While Possession was not commercially successful upon release, the film, as horror flicks are oft prone to do, eventually acquired cult status and was positively re-appraised in later years.
With Finn currently in post-production on Smile 2 for Paramount, Possession is set to be the filmmaker’s next movie.
