Stephen King is hard at work on a third novel in his The Talisman saga, he revealed via Threads. Published in 1984, The Talisman was co-written by King and Peter Straub, and the pair reunited in 2001 to collaborate on the sequel, Black House.
Peter Straub passed away in 2022, but not before conceiving of a concept for this third instalment of the horror fantasy epic. “Peter Straub had a terrific idea before passing away,” King wrote. “Dual credit, as on The Talisman and Black House. But as always, I can never be sure a book will be done until it is. This one has a long way to go.”
The Talisman follows 12-year-old Jack Sawyer on a quest into a parallel world known as the Territories in search of a powerful talisman that would save his mother from certain death. Black House, picks up with an adult Jack as a retired Los Angeles homicide detective trying to solve a series of murders in the small town of French Landing, Wisconsin.
Steven Spielberg has owned the film rights to The Talisman since it was published, with a number of adaptations failing to get off the ground. In 2021 however, it was announced Spielberg would team up with the Duffer Brothers, of Stranger Things fame, to develop it as a Netflix series.
Pigeon Shrine FrightFest descends on the Glasgow Film Festival once more for three days of terror this March.
This year’s event – the 20th in Glasgow – will feature a fantastic line-up of movies from all over the world and a short film selection highlighting filmmakers from the UK and Ireland.
Psyche
Kicking things off on Thursday is a special screening of Stephon Stewart’s Psyche, a sci-fi thriller starring Sarah Ritter. Stewart – who also directed Bigfoot Country – will be attending. This screening is not included in the festival pass.
On Friday March 7th, pass holders can enjoy the UK premiere of House of Ashes, the feature debut of STARBURST favourite Izzy Lee, which also stars Joe Lynch! Izzy, actor Fayna Sanchez, and writer/producer Steve Johanson will be on hand to host the screening.
Next up is the UK premiere of The Last Sacrifice, a documentary by Rupert Russell (who will be attending), which looks at the ‘70s folk horror genre through the lens of a true crime investigation.
This is followed by the world premiere of By the Throat, directed by David Luke Rees and starring Patricia Allison and Rupert Young.
After the success of Here Comes Hell – screened at the 2019 FrightFest Glasgow – director Jack McHenry returns with The Doom Busters, which is billed as ‘Dad’s Army meets Predator’. Count us in!
Friday closes with the UK premiere of Pedro Kos’ feature debut In Our Blood, which blends psychological mystery with horror, weaving a twisted tale of reconciling with the ghosts of our past and confronting the complicity we share in creating a world preying on the most vulnerable.
House of Ashes
Saturday kicks off with the UK premiere of A Mother’s Embrace, directed by Cristian Ponce, it’s set in 1996 during on the biggest storms ever to hit Rio de Janerio.
The ever-popular Short Film Showcase highlights homegrown talent, with seven up-and-coming directors introducing their films.
That is followed by the world premiere of the documentary Hearts of Darkness: The Making of the Final Friday, which looks behind the scenes of the classic ninth entry into the Friday the 13th series. Director Michael Felsher and writer Adam Marcus (who helmed Jason Goes to Hell) will be attending.
Italian legend Pupi Avati (The House with Laughing Windows) returns behind the camera with the UK premiere of The American Backyard, starring Rita Tushinham.
Horror comedy Scared to Death follows, directed by Paul Boyd and starring genre royalty Lin Shaye and Bill Moseley.
Closing the event is the latest from FrightFest regular Andy Edwards, Rumpelstiltskin. Andy and cast members Hannah Baxter-Eve and Joss Carter (who plays the titular character) will be there for the screening.
Rumplestiltskin
FrightFest co-director Alan Jones said: “There has never been a better time to be a fan of the horror, fantasy and science fiction genre and FrightFest, the UK’s biggest and most influential event, plays its vital part in spreading the communal message. This includes our residency at the Glasgow Film Festival, where the FrightFest audience is vibrant, welcoming, and eager to embrace the dark unknown, and we absolutely love being a strand of such a truly interactive experience with the art of film”.
FrightFest Passes are £88 and available from 10am on Friday January 17th. Passes will be exchanged for admission wristbands, which must be worn at all times to access all FrightFest films on Friday, March 7th and Saturday, March 8th. Tickets for Psyche, plus individual tickets for the Friday and Saturday films, are on sale to GFT Cinecard holders on Thursday, January 23rd, from 10am. The general sale starts on Monday, January 27th, at 10am. Prices: £12.00 / £9.50 (concessions).
Netflix has dropped a final trailer just days ahead of the season 2 premiere of Castlevania: Nocturne.
In 1792, during the height of the French Revolution and set in a remote part of western France, the counter-revolutionary aristocracy has forged an alliance with a terrifying Vampire Messiah, who promises to ‘eat the sun’ and unleash an army of vampires and nightcreatures to crush the revolution and enslave humanity. Annette, a sorceress from the Caribbean, seeks out Richter Belmont, last descendant of the long-fabled family of vampire hunters, to lead the resistance.
In season 2, set 300 years after the end of the original Castlevania series, Alucard, the son of Dracula, has joined forces with Richter Belmont, and his band of vampire hunters, who are in a desperate race against time. Erzsebet Báthory, the Vampire Messiah, who already seems invincible, seeks the full power of the goddess Sekhmet so she can plunge the world into endless darkness and terror.
The voice cast for “Castlevania: Nocturne” Season 2 includes Edward Bluemel, Pixie Davies, Thuso Mbedu, Sydney James Harcourt, Nastassja Kinski, Zahn McClarnon, Franka Potente, James Callis, Richard Dormer, Iain Glen, Elarica Johnson, and Aaron Neil.
The series is showrun by Kevin Kolde and Clive Bradley.
Castlevania: Nocturne season 2 debuts on January 16th, 2025. Watch the trailer below:
Netflix returns viewers to the fantastical universe of The Witcher with the official trailer for a new animated film, The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep.
In this new feature, “Geralt of Rivia, a mutated monster hunter, is hired to investigate a series of attacks in a seaside village and finds himself drawn into a centuries-old conflict between humans and merpeople. He must count on friends — old and new — to solve the mystery before the hostilities between the two kingdoms escalate into all-out war.”
The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep takes place between episodes 5 and 6 of The Witcher season 1. Dough Cockle voices Geralt in a film directed by Kang Hei Chul and written by Mike Ostrowski and Rae Benjamin.
The Witcher live-action stars Anya Chalotra and Joey Batey will also reprise their roles as Yennefer of Vengerberg and Jaskier, respectively, in the upcoming animated movie. Christina Wren also voices a new character.
The film hails from the South Korean animated studio Studio MIR, who also worked on Netflix’s The Legend of Korra, Voltron: Legendary Defender, The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, X-Men ’97, and the upcoming Devil May Cry series.
The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep releases to Netflix on February 11th, 2025. Watch the trailer below:
Following its long awaiting (in the UK, anyway!) cinema release, The Last Voyage of the Demeter lands on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD in February.
A terrifying new addition to the Dracula legend, based on a single chilling chapter from Bram Stoker’s classic novel, The Last Voyage of the Demeter chronicles the doomed journey of a merchant ship ferrying 50 mysterious wooden crates from Carpathia to London. As they set sail, the crew soon discover they are not alone. At night, a hidden passenger whose monstrous thirst for blood turns the trip into a harrowing nightmare of tension, terror, and unfathomable evil stalks them.
A first look image was shared by USA Today for the upcoming A24 horror Opus, which stars Ayo Edebiri and John Malkovich.
In Opus, “A young writer is invited to the remote compound of a legendary pop star who mysteriously disappeared 30 years ago. Surrounded by the star’s cult of sycophants and intoxicated journalists, she finds herself in the middle of his twisted plan.”
Hailing from writer and director Mark Anthony Green, the film will release in cinemas on March 14th, 2025. This is his feature directorial debut. The film has been described as “flashy pop horror” and a “tense, psychosocial game of cat and mouse”.
Edebiri, who rose to prominence with roles in The Bear and Bottoms, will play the “meek yet hungry journalist Ariel — her unique charm radiating alongside a distinct final-girl prescience. John Malkovich is effervescent and hypnotic as Moretti, a deified global phenomenon making a dramatically malevolent reintroduction.” Reports out of Sundance suggest the flick includes musical numbers. Opus will have its world premiere at the film festival later this month.
The film stars Amber Midthunder, Juliette Lewis, Murray Bartlett, Stephanie Suganami, Young Mazino, and Tatanka Means.
See the first-look image of Opus below, and stay tuned for when A24 releases the trailer.
Scottish actor Rory McCann, likely best known for playing Sandor ‘The Hound’ Clegane on HBO’s Game of Thrones, will inherit late actor Ray Stevenson’s character for season two of the Star Wars series Ahsoka.
Stevenson, who passed after a brief illness in May 2023 mere months before the series premiered, played the Force-sensitive mercenary known as Baylan Skoll in the show. Ahsoka centres Rosario Dawson’s titular character, Ahsoka Tano, who teams with a former apprentice in order to stop the Empire from reforming. Skoll and his apprentice, Shin Hati (Ivanna Sakhno), present obstacles to Ahsoka’s goals.
We don’t yet known when McCann will make his Ahsoka debut as Baylan Skoll. While the second season is confirmed to be in development, a shoot start date has not been announced, nor has a release date. Dave Filoni was the showrunner of season one, and is returning in the same role.
Rory McCann, who was friends with Stevenson, was most recently seen in Gladiator II, with credits that include Hot Fuzz, Jumanji: The Next Level, and the recent Knuckles Paramount+ series. Future roles for the Scottish actor also include the action-thriller Tornado, in which he’ll star opposite Jack Lowden, Takehiro Hira, and Tim Roth.
Director Paul W. S. Anderson, known for high-entertainment genre movies like Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil,and Event Horizon, is back with In the Lost Lands, an adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s short story starring Milla Jovovich and Dave Bautista. The trailer for the pic has just been released.
In the film, “A queen, desperate to find happiness in love, takes a daring step: she sends the powerful and feared witch Gray Alys (Milla Jovovich) to the “Lost Lands” to give her the magical gift of turning into a werewolf. With the mysterious hunter Boyce (Dave Bautista), who supports her in the fight against dark creatures and merciless enemies, Gray Alys roams an eerie and dangerous world. And only she knows that every wish she grants has unimaginable consequences…”. Anderson directs from a script he co-wrote with Constantin Werner.
The film hails from Vertical and Constantin Films. Also producing are Jeremy Bolt (Resident Evil), Anderson, Jovovich, Bautista, and Jonathan Meisner through their production company Dream Bros Entertainment and Werner.
On his blog last year, author George R.R. Martin called the upcoming film adaptation “dark and twisted and atmospheric, and a lot of fun.”
In The Lost Lands releases in cinemas on March 7th, 2025. Watch the trailer below:
The first full-length trailer for Companion has dropped, the new genre movie from Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema. The film stars Hereticand Yellowjackets actress Sophie Thatcher as a sex bot seeking bloody vengeance, in a tale that combines horror, sci-fi and dark comedy.
The film marks the directorial debut of Drew Hancock, who also wrote the script. Barbarian’s Zach Cregger produces. Rupert Friend, Harvey Guillen, Lukas Cage, Megan Suri, and Jack Quaid also star.
“The silver lining of showing the audience [that] this is a movie about a robot is it’s a way to kind of get ahead of anyone dismissing it as another robot movie,” Hancock states in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “Because it’d be so easy to just be like, ‘This is M3GAN,’ or, ‘This is the Megan Fox movie [Subservience].’ It’s a little different to be like, ‘No, this is a robot movie, but it’s not like any other robot movie that’s out right now.’ It’s not A.I. gone wrong, it’s A.I. gone right.”
The director continues to explain: “It’s a movie about self-discovery and, at its core, is a breakup movie about this woman finding empowerment through discovery of self.”
Companion releases in cinemas on January 31st, 2025. Watch the trailer below:
Here’s a relatively boring, yet odd, conspiracy theory: though it was reported late last year that Austin Butler would be playing the role of Patrick Bateman in a new movie adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel American Psycho for Luca Guadagnino, those reports are now being disputed by none other than Bret Easton Ellis.
On a recent episode of his podcast, the writer suggested: “I have a feeling it’s fake news. I heard from somewhere, from someone, that there are no contracts. Austin Butler hasn’t signed anything to play Patrick Bateman. Luca doesn’t have a deal. Scott Burns, who is supposed to write the screenplay, doesn’t have a deal either.” The author continued, “From various sources that I have, this is just fake news that was put out there to see how an audience is going to react. If it does exist, I’m not involved. I have nothing to do with this. I might get some money if they do this, but I am not involved creatively on any level, and that is all I know.”
The hypothetical film is said to be a new adaptation of the novel and not a remake of the 2000 film by Mary Harron that starred Christian Bale. In American Psycho, “a wealthy New York City investment banking executive, Patrick Bateman, hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he delves deeper into his violent, hedonistic fantasies.”
At this point, who knows what’s true. Get the Scooby Gang on this.
