We have a bounty of horror news this week, from new projects from Osgood Perkins and the fine folks behind the IT series, as well as info about an unreleased Guillermo Del Toro Lovecraft adapation and a whole lot more! Check it all out in The Week in Horror!
Osgood Perkins, of Gretel and Hansel and The Blackcoat’s Daughter fame, is back with a new horror movie called Longlegs, according to Deadline this week. Even more exciting is that the director is teaming up with Nicolas Cage for the first time on the project. No plot details yet, but this pairing has me extremely intrigued.
If you’ve been itching to bring Michael Myers, Laurie Strode, and, uh, that other guy home with you this Christmas, the Halloween Ends Collector’s Edition comes to digital this week on November 15, and to 4K Ultra HD and Blu-Ray on December 27, 2022. This package is laden with special features if you want to delve deeper into the finale of David Gordon Green’s Halloween trilogy, which began in 2018.
Included in the Special Features are:
- Audio commentary by director/co-writer David Gordon Green, actors Andi Matichak and Rohan Campbell, first assistant director Atilla Salih Yücer, and production assistant Hugo Garza
- Ending Halloween – Explore the creative team’s approach to crafting the film’s final sequence
- Final Girl – Jamie Lee Curtis discusses the legacy of Laurie Strode
- No Place Like Haddonfield – Filmmakers and cast reveal what makes Halloween productions so special
- A Different Threat – Examine how evil has evolved in Haddonfield
- The Visions of Terror – See how production departments came together to achieve the film’s unique style
- Twisted Deaths – An up-close look at the film’s gruesome death scenes
- 6 deleted and extended scenes
- Gag reel
If that weren’t enough, you can also bring home the entire trilogy in a new collected 4K Ultra HD and Blu-Ray on December 27. The set will include all three movies – Halloween (2018), Halloween Kills, and Halloween Ends – alongside their previously-released special features. You can pre-order this one over at Amazon for $54.96 USD.
HBO Max is still forging ahead with its Welcome to Derry series, which is a prequel to the movies based on Stephen King’s IT from Andy Muschietti. The series will begin in the 1960’s and lead right into the plot of IT: Part One. Andy Muschietti is on as a producer, and Variety reported this week the Brad Caleb Kane and Jason Fuchs will be showrunners on the series. Also notable is that Muschietti is set to direct the series pilot. Now that the showrunners are set, expect casting and production news to come out hard and fast.
Travis Stevens’ A Wounded Fawn, which is one of my favourite horrors of 2022, is finally coming to Shudder on December 1. The film has a brand new poster and trailer, and comes with my highest possible recommendation.
“Inspired by surrealist art and Greek mythology, A Wounded Fawn follows the story of Meredith Tanning (Sarah Lind, Jakob’s Wife), a local museum curator who is dipping her toe back into the dating pool, only to be targeted by a charming serial killer (Josh Ruben, Scare Me, Werewolves Within). When a fateful romantic getaway between the two becomes a tense game of cat and mouse, both must confront the madness within him.”
The long-awaited followup to Searching, the film that coined the term ‘Screenlife’ for movies that take place entirely on the screen of a computer or phone, is headed to theatres earlier than expected on January 20, 2023. Searching told the story of a father (played by John Cho) who breaks into his daughter’s computer when she disappears. The new film, called Missing, will not star Cho or any of the other cast from Searching, and will take the plot in a new direction, while still playing out on the screens of the characters devices. Missing stars Storm Reid, Nia Long, Joaquim de Almeida, Ken Leung, Amy Landecker, Daniel Henney, Megan Suri and Tim Griffin. Will Merrick and Nick Johnson direct from a script based on a story by Sev Ohanian and Aneesh Chaganty.
If you were one of the many (us included) that are big fans of Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities anthology series for Netflix, you’ll be happy to know that the director/curator already has big plans for the second season. Speaking to Indiewire this week, del Toro revealed some directors that were on his list for this season that didn’t work out, and at least one that’s on his radar for the next outing.
“I have a list. For example, we tried to get Jayro Bustamente before and he couldn’t because of COVID. When you think about Mexican filmmakers, there’s Issa Lopez. She was going to direct one of the episodes when she got ‘True Detective’ and she couldn’t do it. Boots Riley wrote and was going to direct one episode and he got his series greenlit…Larry Fessenden is one hundred percent at the very very top of my list for a second list. Larry is one of those names that back in the days of the Spirit Awards I fought for him to be nominated with ‘Habit,’ which I think is phenomenal. I’ve been in touch with him since then. We were very close to remaking The Orphanage.”
Del Toro also wants a larger hand in the second season. “I would like to write the opening and closing stories for the next season and leave the middle to others,” he said. “What I do is I curate stories that have not been done that could land well with the director. For example, The Autopsy was a story revered among horror readers but was not well known and deemed unadaptable. So I said let’s adapt it.”
Finally, del Toro’s adaptation of HP Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness is an infamous white whale for the prolific director. Del Toro has been trying to get the project made since around 2006, and at one point had James Cameron and Tom Cruise attached to the project as producers. Del Toro launched a new Instagram account this week in the wake of Elon Musk’s Twitter fuckery, and one of his first posts is some never-before-seen test footage from the project.
The film might not ever see the light of day, but one hopes that the director’s success, as well as the changing landscape for filmmakers with so many streaming services looking for content, might give the project a glimmer of hope.
