In this week’s The Week in Horror, check out the news here about a much-needed sequel to our new favourite Christmas horror, the eleventh installment of a classic Stephen King series, and much more!
Barbarian breakout director Zach Cregger dropped some news this week about his new project, which will be produced with New Line Cinema. The project will be called Weapons and while plot details are scant at the moment, The Hollywood Reporter lets slip that Weapons is “described as a multi and inter-related story horror epic that tonally is in the vein of Magnolia, the 1999 actor-crammed showcase from filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson.”
Cregger, who got his start in the NYC sketch comedy group ‘The Whitest Kids U Know’, will be making “eight figures to write/direct” with “guaranteed greenlight and…theatrical release” and “Cregger receiving final cut.” Pretty sweet deal for someone with only one film to his credit.
Wes Craven’s 2005 thriller Red Eye is set for a new Limited Edition 4K Ultra HD release from Paramount. If you’re a fan of the airplane-set horror starring Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy, you’ll want to keep your, um, eye on this one.
Craven’s Red Eye is in 4K with HDR and 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio. Special Features are set to include:
- Audio commentary from editor Patrick Lussier
- Audio commentary from Wes Craven, producer Marianne Maddalena, and editor Patrick Lussier
- Filmmaker Focus – Wes Craven and Red Eye
- Feature – Wes Craven: In His Own Words
- Feature – A New Kind of Thriller
- Feature – The Making of Red Eye
- Gag reel
Look for Red Eye 4K on March 21, 2023.
Christopher Landon, director of Happy Death Day and Freaky has a new family horror set to premiere on Netflix on February 24. The film is called We Have A Ghost and stars Anthony Mackie, David Harbour, Tig Notaro, Jennifer Coolidge, Jahi Di’Allo Winston, Erica Ash, Isabella Russo, Niles Fitch, Faith Ford and Steve Coulter.
In We Have A Ghost, “Finding a ghost named Ernest haunting their new home turns Kevin’s family into overnight social media sensations. But when Kevin and Ernest go rogue to investigate the mystery of Ernest’s past, they become a target of the CIA.” This one’s got big Beetlejuice vibes, and I’m very into that.
Tommy Wirkola’s hit Christmas thriller Violent Night (now available on Digital, VOD, and Peacock) was such a success that Violent Night 2 is on the way. Wirkola tells The Wrap that,
“We’re talking about it and we’re just making deals and getting everything in order,” Wirkola tells the outlet. “We have time to really crack the script and figure out the story. And we have some ideas, me and Pat and Josh and the producers, we’ve been talking about where we want to take it and what we want to see. There’s stuff we left on the floor like the North Pole, Mrs. Claus, the elves. But story-wise I think we have a really, really cool idea that expands on the world and scope, but still keeping that tone that we love from the first one.”
Sounds like early days, but maybe there’s a surprise down the chimney for this holiday season.
Unexpectedly, we got an announcement that an unbelievable eleventh entry into the Children of the Corn series is headed to theatres on March 3, with a release on Digital on March 21.
The Children of the Corn series has spawned 11 movies, including two remakes, starting in 1984 to 2018. For a single Stephen King short story, that’s a whole lot. This new film will be called, confusingly, Children of the Corn and is being directed by Kurt Wimmer (Ultraviolet, Equilibrium, Total Recall, Point Break).
In a deviation from the original story, Wimmer’s film sees “a psychopathic twelve-year-old girl in a small town in Nebraska who recruits all the other children and goes on a bloody rampage, killing the corrupt adults and anyone else who opposes her. A bright high schooler who won’t go along with the plan is the town’s only hope of survival.”
Children of the Corn stars Elena Kampouris, Kate Moyer, Callan Mulvey, and Bruce Spence.
In big news about Robert Eggers’ star-studded Nosferatu film, Willem Dafoe has signed onto the project according to Deadline. He joins Bill Skarsgard (who plays Count Orlok/Nosferatu), Nicholas Hoult, and Lily-Rose Depp. Eggers writes/directs.
Eggers’ reimagining “is a gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman (Depp) in 19th century Germany and the ancient Transylvanian vampire (Skarsgard) who stalks her, bringing untold horror with him.”
And finally, if you’re as engrossed in HBO’s Last of Us as I am, you’ll be happy to know that the series is officially renewed for Season 2.
Does this mean we’ll be introduced to that character who does that thing from the second game? Hopefully, but we should be ready for some deviations from our favourite digital survival horror, as the series is making some necessary shifts due to the change of medium. Either way, there’s a lot more of Joel, Ellie, and friends to come!
