XLrator Media has released the first trailer for The Banshee Chapter, a mind-bending thriller from actor/producer Zachary Quinto’s Before the Door Pictures shingle, starring Ted Levine (Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs), Michael McMillian (“True Blood”) andSwedish stunner Katia Winter (”Dexter”).
The Banshee Chapter follows a female journalist as she searches for a friend who has gone missing after experimenting with “mind-altering chemicals developed in secret government drug tests.” The film, based on true accounts, is described as “a fast-paced blend of fact and fiction.”
“Mistresses” star Shannyn Sossamon has said I do to playing Matt Dillon’s wife in “Wayward Pines,” a ten-episode mystery thriller from Chad Hodge (”Playboy Club”) and M. Night Shyamalan, based on the Blake Crouch novel of the same name.
“Wayward Pines” follows Secret Service agent Ethan Burke (Dillon) on assignment to find two missing federal agents in the Idaho town of Wayward Pines. What he discovers instead are mysterious and sinister happenings that threaten the very core of who he is as a person.
Sossamon joins a cast that includes stunner Carla Gugino (Sin City), Academy Award-winner Melissa Leo (The Fighter), Terence Howard (Iron Man) and Toby Jones (The Girl). The series is penned by Hodge and is slated to debut in 2014.
Jamie Babbit’s Breaking the Girls, a lesbian re-imagining of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 psychological thriller Strangers On a Train, is in theaters today. Madeline Zima (“Californication”) and Agnes Bruckner (The Pact) star as friends who agree to kiss and make-out with each other while plotting how to off the others enemies.
Reviews have not been kind for Breaking the Girls, but being that its written by American Psycho scribe Guinevere Turner and helmed by Babbit, who directed Elisha Cuthbert and Camilla Belle in the highly underrated psych-thriller The Quiet, I still plan to grab my penis loved one and go see it.
“Hung” star Rebecca Creskoff is checking into season two of A&E’s superb new drama “Bates Motel,” a present-day prequel series to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, produced by Carlton Cuse (“LOST”) and Kerry Ehrin (”Friday Night Lights”).
“Bates Motel” follows an emotionally unstable Norman Bates and his controlling mother Norma as they attempt to start new lives and a motel business in the small fictional town of White Pine Bay, Oregon. The show premiered in March to positive reviews from critics and fans alike.
Creskoff will play Norma’s first female friend in White Pine Bay. Also new this season are Michael Vartan (“Alias”) as Norma’s love interest, Kenny Johnson (“Sons of Anarchy”) as her estranged older brother and Michael Eklund (The Call) as a high ranking member of the town’s drug traffickers.
Production on season two of “Bates Motel” starts this week.
Monster Pictures has released a new, more disturbing trailer for Canadian director Éric Falardeau’s Thanatomorphose (a french word meaning the visible signs of an organism’s decomposition caused by death), starring up-and-comer Kayden Rose.
That poster is a vagina.
Rose plays a woman who after a night of rough sex wakes up to massive bruises on her body that don’t heal with time, but rot instead to the point that her flesh falls of the bone. It’s pretty gruesome stuff that should remind guys to never stay after a night of donkey punching, not even for pancakes.
A new trailer has been released for Spanish filmmaker Álex de la Iglesia’s Las Brujas De Zugarramurdi (retitled Witching and Bitching for American audiences), a horror-comedy about a cursed group of thieves who end up in a city overrun by witches.
Iglesia describes the film as “outrageous” and compares it to the comedy It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World, but we find it to be more of a sexy Harry Potter after catching a glimpse of Carolina Bang riding a broom while clad in black lingerie (see the 51-second mark).
Disney star Bella Thorne continues to shake up her career by taking on roles in horror. Her new venture is Home Invasion, a Voltage Pictures thriller about a family held captive by home intruders.
The film is directed by newcomer Sean Carter and penned by first-time scribe Joseph Dembner. Deadline reports that Thorne will play Jamie, a disillusioned teenager with a secret.
The 15-year-old’s previous horror creds include the teen supernatural thriller Forget Me Not and The Seer. She is best known for playing aspiring pop singer CeCe Jones on the Disney Channel’s “Shake It Up.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger is getting a little bit of sunshine for his upcoming zombie film Maggie. THR reports that Abigail Breslin has signed on to play the titular character in a story about a father and his undead daughter. Henry Hobson makes his feature directorial debut with a Black List script by John Scott 3.
Breslin steps in for Chloe Grace Moretz, who bailed due to scheduling issues. Schwarzenegger is producing the film with a bunch of rich people.
Sixteen-year-old Breslin made her movie acting debut at the age of five in M. Night Shyamalan’s 2002 alien invasion thriller Signs. An Oscar-nominated performance in Little Miss Sunshine followed in 2006. Her genre creds include 2009’s Zombieland, this year’s sleeper Halle Berry hit The Call and the upcoming Ender’s Game.
Anchor Bay Films has set a Sept. 10 DVD and Blu-ray release date for Parallel Media and Project 8 Films’ long delayed supernatural frightener The Black Waters of Echo’s Pond, starring Danielle Harris, Robert Patrick, Mircea Monroe (“Episodes”) and twins Elise and Electra Avellan (pictured).
The Black Waters of Echo’s Pond follows a group of nine friends that violently turn against each other after playing a mysterious and ancient game during their holiday on a deserted island. The 2010 film is directed by Gabriel Bologna (30,000 Leagues Under the Sea).
Warner Bros. has released a new and more intense trailer for Gravity, a sci-fi drama from acclaimed director Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men), starring Academy Award winners Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as astronauts drifting aimlessly through space after a routine spacewalk goes terribly wrong.
Bullock is Dr. Ryan Stone, a medical engineer whose first shuttle mission is with retiring astronaut Matt Kowalsky, played by Clooney. The trailer shows the disaster that separates the two and leads to what I’m hoping are Open Water-like thrills in space. Gravity opens Oct.4.
