CBS’ CLARICE Pilot Adds Two More Names

Devyn A. Tyler

While we’re not going to be getting that Hannibal revival any point soon, there’s some casting news on CBS’ pilot for Clarice.

In case you hadn’t guessed it, Clarice will centre on Clarice Starling and pick things up in the aftermath of the Silence of the Lambs tale in which Starling has tangled with Hannibal Lecter and Buffalo Bill.

Courtesy of Deadline, Watchmen’s Devyn A. Tyler and Animal Kingdom’s Lucca De Oliveira have been added to Clarice’s pilot offering. The duo joins the previously announced Rebecca Breeds in the show, with The Originals’ Breeds to play Clarice’s titular detective.

From what we know about their roles, Tyler will be player Clarice’s best friend and FBI Academy roommate, Ardelia Mapp. As for De Oliveira, he’ll be playing a character called Tomas Esquivel, who is a former Desert Storm sniper.

The early word on Clarice reads:

Clarice is set in 1993, a year after the events of The Silence of the Lambs. The series is a deep dive into the untold personal story of Clarice Starling, as she returns to the field to pursue serial murderers and sexual predators while navigating the high stakes political world of Washington, DC.

Hannibal’s Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet have written the pilot and will serve as executive producers on the project, while Star Trek: Picard’s Maja Vrvilo has been tasked with directing the Clarice pilot.

SANCTUARY Reboot in Development at Syfy

Sanctuary

In further evidence that no property truly remains dead forever, Syfy’s Sanctuary is making a return to TV nearly ten years after it first came to a close.

Via Deadline, Syfy has opted to bring back this long-standing genre favourite and give it the reboot treatment.

The Damian Kindler-created Sanctuary premiered back in 2008 – although it actually began life as a 2007 webseries –  going on to run for four seasons before getting the axe in 2011. And for fans of that four-season run, the early word is that discussions are already ongoing to have Amanda Tapping return as the near-immortal Dr Helen Magnus.

In Sanctuary, Tapping’s Magnus and her team spent the majority of their time trying to protect superpowered sorts and save the world.

As ever, expect more on this Sanctuary reboot as we get it.

Karyn Kusama to Direct DRACULA for Blumhouse

Bela Lugosi Dracula

As Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man is currently impressing audiences on the silver screen right now, now comes news on another classic monster movie on the way from Blumhouse.

Via The Hollywood Reporter, Jennifer’s Body director Karyn Kusama has been tasked with tackling a new take on Dracula for Blumhouse Productions. At this stage, the project has yet to be officially housed at Universal Pictures, and Blumhouse could feasibly work with another studio on the film due to the fact that Dracula is a public domain property. Chances are, though, this picture could well end up with Universal in a similar way to what happened with The Invisible Man.

In addition to Kusama taking the director’s chair for Dracula, The Invitation’s Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay are to write the movie’s screenplay.

This news comes on the back of James Wan being confirmed to be producing a new Frankenstein, Elizabeth Banks directing The Invisible Woman, Paul Feig working on Dark Army, Dexter Fletcher developing Renfield, and Matt Stawski handling Monster Mash.

For fans of classic horror characters, it could well be a cracking few years ahead. And if you’ve yet to check out The Invisible Man, we highly recommend you do so at the earliest convenience.

Roberto Orci to Pen a Marvel Movie for Sony

Spider-Verse

With Sony currently having a whole host of Spider-Man-tied projects in development, Roberto Orci is returning to the world of the Wall-crawler once more.

Courtesy of The Wrap, Orci has been brought in to pen a mystery Marvel movie for Sony. Said movie will exists within the shared Spider-Verse occupied by Venom and the upcoming Morbius.

As alluded to, Orci has previous with ol’ Web-head, for he co-wrote The Amazing Spider-Man 2. That movie, of course, was famously so bad that it caused the already-announced The Amazing Spider-Man 3, The Amazing Spider-Man 4, The Sinister Six, and Venom to all be scrapped as Sony went back to the drawing board with Spidey.

That returning to the drawing board would ultimately end in a deal being struck with Marvel Studios to incorporate Peter Parker into the Marvel Cinematic Universe – as played brilliantly by Tom Holland.

In addition to ASM2, Orci’s other credits includes a couple of Transformers movies, the first two rebooted Star Trek pictures, and he’s one of the minds behind the Sleepy Hollow TV series.

Just what this Orci-penned new Sony Marvel movie will be remains to be seen, although we do know that the studio already has tentative plans to give solo films to Black Cat, Silver Sable, Kraven the Hunter, Madame Web, Nightwatch, Jackpot, Silk, Aunt May, and Jessica Drew’s Spider-Woman.

Up next for Sony’s Spider-Verse is the Jared Leto-headlined Morbius this July, before Venom 2 arrives in October.

Award-Winning Short SYLPHVANIA GROVE to Debut Online

grove

As we gear up for this year’s STARBURST International Film Festival, one of the amazing shorts we screened last year is about to make its debut online. Sylphvania Grove will be available on Seed & Spark from March 17th.

Written and directed by Rebekah Fieschi, it stars Maxine Wanderer, Meaghan Bloom Fluitt, Charlie Gillette, Samarah Conley, Jessica Baird and Al Pagano. The official synopsis is:

The adventure of a young girl, Mycena, who doesn’t fit in at school and is neglected by her parents.  Her only refuge is the fantasy stories she reads secretly at night under her blankets.  One night, a magical being pops out of her book and beckons her to follow it into the woods where her fears take on fantastic forms

Check out the trailer below:

Sylphvania Grove [Trailer] from Rebekah Fieschi on Vimeo.

You’ll be able to watch the full short on Seed & Spark from March 17th here.

Goran Višnjić is THE BRIDES’ Dracula

Goran Višnjić

Following last week’s first piece of casting news for the series – that being Hannibal’s Gina Torres – now comes word that ABC’s The Brides has found its Dracula.

The Brides will focus on the famed Brides of Dracula, with Torres to play one such bride. Now, Deadline is reporting that Timeless, Doctor Who and Santa Clarita Diet‘s Goran Višnjić will play Dracula in this new spin on a classic IP.

From Riverdale and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’s Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, the early word on The Brides reads:

The Brides is a sexy, contemporary reimagining of the Dracula saga as a family drama with a trio of powerful, diverse female leads. With strong horror elements, The Brides is a vampire soap about empowered, immortal women and the things they do to maintain wealth, prestige, legacy – and their non-traditional family.

At this stage, The Brides is at the pilot stage, with the hope obviously to take the effort to a full series.

THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER to Feature the Guardians

Guardians of the Galaxy

While many are expecting Chris Hemsworth’s Thunder God to turn up in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, we now seemingly have confirmation that the Guardians themselves will be making an appearance in Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder.

This confirmation comes directly from the voice of Groot himself, Vin Diesel. Well doing press for this month’s Bloodshot, Diesel revealed to ComicBook.com that Love and Thunder will “incorporate some of the Guardians of the Galaxy”.

If you remember, the Guardians and the Odinson first crossed paths during Avengers: Infinity War and went on to forge quite the friendship. Well, bar the jibes and quips directed at Thor by Star-Lord. At the last count, the God of Thunder was invited to join the Guardians on their journey back up into the stars at the end of Avengers: Endgame.

Thor: Love and Thunder is currently set for November 5th, 2021, with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 yet to have an official release date announced just yet.

LOST IN SPACE to Conclude with Third Season

Lost in Space

In some great news that’s tinged in sadness, Netflix has moved to renew Lost in Space for a third season.

What’s the said news, you say? Why, as per ComicBook.com, said Season Three will be the final offering from the series.

According to showrunner Zack Estrin, the plan was always to conclude this reimagined Lost in Space show after three seasons – and that will indeed be the case.

As Estrin explained, “From the beginning, we’ve always viewed this particular story of the Robinsons as a trilogy. A three-part epic family adventure with a clear beginning, middle, and end.”

Estrin would add how he’s “excited about continuing to explore new stories with my friends at Netflix” – so expect to see more projects from Zack and the on-demand juggernaut.

This new take on an old favourite first landed on Netflix back in 2018. With a cast featuring Toby Stephens, Molly Parker, Maxwell Jenkins, Taylor Russell, and Parker Posey, Lost in Space proved to be quite the success as both critics and fans alike got on board with the series.

Season Three of Lost in Space will air at some point in 2021.

MAX VON SYDOW 1929 – 2020

Max Von Sydow

In some sad news, legendary actor Max von Sydow has passed away at the age of 90.

The Swedish star’s career spanned a ludicrous eight decades, with von Sydow’s first screen credit coming back in 1948. From there, he went on to forge a relationship with Ingmar Bergman that saw the duo make 11 movies together – most notably 1957’s The Seventh Seal.

For genre fans, Max will forever be remembered for roles such as Father Lankester Merrin in The Exorcist, Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon, King Osric in Conan the Barbarian, Ernst Stavro Blofeld in Never Say never Again, and more recently as Lor San Tekka in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Throughout a truly iconic career, van Sydow was nominated for two Academy Awards, two Golden Globes, two Emmy Awards, and was recognised by both the Cannes Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival.

The thoughts of all here at STABURST go out to the family, friends, and fans of Max von Sydow. May you rest in peace, good sir.

James Wan Producing Universal Monster Movie

James Wan

Right now, there are few hotter names in the horror genre than James Wan – which is why it’s fantastic to hear that Wan will soon be tackling Universal’s closet of creepy characters.

Courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter, the Saw, Insidious, The Conjuring and Aquaman director is to produce a new Universal monster movie through his Atomic Monster banner. At this stage, it’s believed that Wan won’t be directing this picture, although that could always change.

The subject matter of the film is being kept relatively hush-hush right now, but we do know that Supernatural’s Robbie Thompson is on writing duties.

One bit of info out there about this offering, is that Disturbia will be an influence, and the movie will follow a group of teens who discover that their neighbour is building a monster in his basement.

Of course, that will clearly have people thinking about Frankenstein, yet we’ll have to wait and see what official word comes out on this picture over the next few months.

This all comes on the back of long-time James Wan collaborator and BFF Leigh Whannell absolutely knocking it out of the park with another famed Universal property, The Invisible Man. That film is currently in cinemas and is a complete and utter must-see for any and all genre fans.

Elsewhere, Universal has Elizabeth Banks attached to direct The Invisible Woman, Paul Feig on Dark Army, Dexter Fletcher tackling Renfield, and Matt Stawski handling Monster Mash.

For fans of classic horror characters, it could be a cracking few years ahead.

As ever, expect more on all of these projects as they continue to develop.