Twilight: Eclipse star Kirsten Prout has jumped on board Joy Ride 3, the newest installment in the franchise first launched in 2001 by director John Dahl (The Last Seduction) and screenwriter J.J. Abrams (yes, that J.J. Abrams). The new sequel is written and directed by Declan O’Brien (Wrong Turn 4 & 5).
Joy Ride 3 finds a group of young rally racers chased down by sadistic serial killer and truck driver Rusty Nail. Prout plays tuner-car girl Jewel McCaul. She joins co-stars Jesse Hutch (Freddy vs. Jason), Gianpaolo Venuta (“Being Human”), Leela Sevasta (Black Christmas) and Ken Kirzinger as Rusty Nail.
Proust is best known for playing love interest Amanda Bloom on ABC Family’s sci-fi series “Kyle XY” and doomed vampire Lucy in Twilight: Eclipse. The pretty canuck also starred in the MTV tween-slashersMy Super Psycho Sweet 16 2 & 3.
IFC Midnight has set a Nov. 22 VOD release date for Contracted, a body-horror thriller from writer and director Eric England (Madison County). The film stars Najarra Townsend (pictured) as a young woman who thinks she’s caught a sexually transmitted disease up until her body starts to completely rot.
Contracted co-stars Katie Stegeman (Madison County), Caroline Williams (Hatchet III), Charley Koontz (Rubber), TV starlet Alice MacDonald and Simon Barrett (You’re Next). A trailer has been released for the film and it definitely makes AIDS look like herpes by comparison.
eOne Entertainment has released a trailer for writing/directing duo Glen Scantlebury and Lucy Phillips’Abducted. The film stars Tessa Ferrer (”Grey’s Anatomy”), Jelly Howie (Victim), Trevor Morgan (Mean Creek), Ross Thomas (Soul Surfer), and TV starlets Vivan Dugré and Emily Graham-Handley.
Set in Los Angeles, Abducted finds three couples kidnapped and held captive by masked individuals out to conduct “bizarre medical experiments and horrific physiological torture” on them. The film arrives on DVD on Oct. 15.
2 Guns and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol stunner Paula Patton is in negotiations to star in Legendary Pictures’ adaptation of Blizzard Entertainment’s immensely popular PC game World of Warcraft.
World of Warcraft is set to go into production in January under the direction of Duncan Jones (Moon). Its release is slated for 2015. In addition to Patton, Colin Farrell is also said to be in the mix for a role.
Genre fans will recognize Patton as the lead in Alexandre Aja’s Mirrors and Tony Scott’s time travel thriller Déjà Vu, in which she makes her nude debut. She’s coming off this summer’s buddy-actioner 2 Guns, in which she also goes nude (I’m guessing she’s trying to get Denzel Washington’s attention).
An extended trailer has gone online for director Jonathan Glazer’s (Sexy Beast) upcoming adaptation of Michel Faber’s debut novel Under the Skin, an erotic sci-fi drama about an alien that takes the form of beautiful big-breasted woman to seduce men to murder and turn into food for her species.
Scarlett Johansson goes totally nude as the voracious and busty alien, but don’t expect Natasha Henstridge inSpecies or Mathilda May in Lifeforce type thrills. This is strictly WTF artsy-fartsy stuff—the kind of thing critics need to feel good about rewarding Johansson’s bush come award time.
Blumhouse Productions and Universal Pictures have tapped Footloose and Rock of Ages star Julianne Hough to topline Skeleton Key director Iain Softley’s new road thriller Curve. Hough will play the victim of a murderous hitchhiker.
According to Variety, Hough’s character is a young bride-to-be trapped in her car after crashing it to escape the hitchhiker she foolishly picked up. No word if Hough breaks into song or dance.
Hough is an award-winning country singer and “Dancing with the Stars” champ whose first lead role was in 2011’s Footloose remake. Her last outing was in the 2012 movie adaptation of the hair-metal musical Rock of Ages.
Magnolia Pictures has picked up the North American rights to Grand Piano, a high-concept thriller from Spanish filmmaker Eugenio Mira (Agnosia) and screenwriter Damien Chazelle (The Last Exorcism Part II). Elijah Wood toplines the film as a disgraced concert pianist making a comeback after a five-year hiatus.
As if that weren’t pressure enough, a madman lies hidden in the concert hall with a sniper riffle aimed at his wife. If he screws up, she will be shot dead.
Grand Piano co-stars John Cusack as the killer, British stunner Tamsin Egerton (“Camelot”), Alex Winter (Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure) and Argo and Red State starlet Kerry Bishé (pictured above) as the wife. Magnolia will release the film in 2014 through its Magnet Releasing label.
Gone Dark is an indie revenge thriller that at its worst resembles a scripted porn feature minus the anals, but at its best trumps Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers by keeping the gun-toting bikini babes and losing the pretentious artsy-fartsy crap.
Gone Dark follows Jack, a notorious drug syndicate criminal who fakes his death with the help of his hooligan friends. Unfortunately for them, Jack’s sister, Kim, is an FBI agent eager to settle the score with those she thinks killed her brother. The film hits VOD on Nov. 1 and DVD on Jan. 7, 2014.
Osiris Entertainment has set an Oct. 22 DVD release date for Bad Behavior, a babysitter-in-peril thriller starring “ER” alumna Hallee Hirsh (Dr. Greene’s daughter), Linda Hamilton (Terminator) and national treasure Ted McGinley (Revenge of the Nerds).
Hirsh plays Zoe, a babysitter tormented on the job by a fat kid with a crush and not enough pizza. Making matters worse is Zoe’s bum knees and/or asthma. There’s no mention of either in the trailer, but I’m guessing there must be a reason why she can’t outrun the tubby terror.
See No Evil 2 finds serial killer Jacob Goodnight awakening from the dead in the city morgue after being killed off by survivors of his Blackwell Hotel murder spree. The eye-gouging madman wastes no time as he gets to work on slaughtering a group of med school students now trapped in the building.
Horror fans will recognize Simmons, who made her acting debut at age eight in Stephen King’s It, from roles in Final Destination 3, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, Steven R. Monroe’s Ogre and the sci-fi TV series “Kyle XY.” Her stalkers fans will also know her from the creature features Chupacabra Terror, Malibu Shark Attack, Snakehead Terror and Monster Island with Carmen Electra.
