Newbie screenwriters Brandon Bestenheider and Allen Bey have sold their spec script Grim Night to Universal Pictures for a reported six-or-seven figure sum. Director Bryan Bertino’s (The Strangers) production shingle Unbroken Pictures is attached to produce. No word yet on whether Bertino will direct the project as well.
Grim Night follows an American family as they attempt to survive an attack by creatures who emerge once a year to murder thousands of people around the world. A teaser for the spec depicts the monsters as Grim Reapers—hooded robes and all. But, unless cutbacks have forced the Reapers to work one day a year, I’m pretty sure they’re busy year round. Therefore, these Grims must be a whole new kind of evil.
Peep the teaser for the spec (used to aid in the sale of the project):
Human drug and tabloid queen Lindsay Lohan will appear totally nude in an upcoming issue of Playboy. The 25-year-old stunner wrapped a four-day photo shoot for the magazine on Tuesday. According to TMZ, Lohan was paid just short of a million dollars to show her “boobs, ass, and vag.”
What? No balloon knot?
Lohan made her horror film debut in the 2007 serial-killer drama I Know Who Killed Me. She played stigmatic twins with very large breasts. Last year, she portrayed a junkie socialite with very large breasts in Robert Rodriguez’s grindhouse actioner Machete.
Lohan is (or was) also attached to star in director Ryuhei Kitamura’s (The Midnight Meat Train) new frightener Black Friday 3-D and was reported to be fancied by Stephen King for a the titular role in a rumored Carrie remake.
Irish fashion model-turned-actress Caitriona Balfe is set to join “Teen Wolf” starlet Crystal Reed in Intrepid Pictures’ upcoming psycho-bitch thriller Crush. The Malik Bader-directed film begins production this week in Los Angeles.
Written byRoommate scribe Sonny Mallhi, the film revolves around a popular high school jock who becomes an obsession for the girls around him, including an especially demented admirer. Balfe, seen briefly in this summer’s Super 8, will play the owner of the comic book store where Reed works.
Crush also stars Lucas Till (X-Men: First Class) as the jock, Sarah Bolger (“The Tudors”) as his long-time friend, Reid Ewing (”Modern Family”) as Reed’s lovesick geek, Camille Guaty (“Las Vegas”) as a sexy teacher, and Saw co-creator and actor Leigh Whannell as a local yogurt shop owner.
Scarlett Johansson plays a horny, killer alien with magnificent breasts in director Jonathan Glazer’s (Sexy Beast) upcoming adaptation of author Michel Faber’s debut novel “Under the Skin.” Posted above is our first glimpse of the 26-year-old starlet in character.
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.
“Under the Skin” follows sexy alien Isserley (Johansson) as she picks up big, buff, healthy-looking male hitchhikers for her species to turn into food—a delicacy called Vodsel. The novel is set in Scotland, where apparently drifters are an attractive lot, unlike North America where they look and act like this.
Plot-wise, I’m reminded of Peter Jackson’s gory 1987 horror-comedy Bad Taste, in which aliens invade a small New Zealand town to harvest its residents for their intergalactic fast food joints—which is cool. But, as far as alien femme fatales go, I’m disappointed with Isserley’s look.
I know there’s a message behind the madness, but I was hoping Johansson’s look would be more Natasha Henstridge in Species, or better yet, Mathilda May in Lifeforce. Here, she just looks like the kind of chick you’d hit up at a Journey concert.
Rose McGowan will get hearts beating as Patrick John Flueger’s (Footloose) love interest in director John La Tier’s adaptation of the 1843 Edgar Allan Poe short story “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Production on the film begins on Oct. 20 in New Orleans.
Says La Tier:
It was always our intention to stay true to Poe. We want this film to be something he would be proud of, and I believe this captivating script, combined with this cast and art direction, is going to be just that.
“The Tell-Tale Heart ” is the story of a murderer haunted by the beating heart of the old man he’s killed, dismembered, and buried underneath the floorboards of his house. There is no romance and/or love interest in the original story, though there has always been speculation that the murderer could be a woman, which would make McGowan’s role all the more interesting.
Joining McGowan and Flueger on the Popart Film Factory & Leverage Entertainment-produced project are Peter Bogdanovich (TheLast Picture Show), Jacob Vargas (Devil), Damon Whitaker (The Hillside Strangler) and Kirk Fox (The Postman).
American Beauty and American Pie star Mena Suvari is set to guest star on Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s (“Nip/Tuck,” “Glee”) new FX series “American Horror Story.” The 32-year-old starlet will play a woman with a connection to the haunted house at the center of the show—a woman who goes by the nickname The Black Dahlia.
The Black Dahlia, of course, is the name given to murder victim Elizabeth Short by the press in 1947. Short’s body was discovered in a Los Angeles park, nude and severed at the middle. The unsolved case has been the subject of numerous books and movies, including works by novelist James Elroy and filmmaker Brian De Palma.
No word yet on what significance the moniker actually has on the show, but viewers will know for sure when Suvari appears in the ninth episode. “American Horror Story” stars Dylan McDermott and Connie Britton as a troubled married couple who discover that their new Los Angeles home is haunted. The show airs Wednesdays on FX.
Suvari genre creds include Paramount Pictures Kiss the Girls (her feature film debut), MGM’s ill-received Carrie sequel The Rage: Carrie 2, Millennium Films remake of George Romero’s Day of the Dead, and Stuart Gordon’sStuck, a based-on-a-true-story thriller about a woman who, after hitting a pedestrian with her car, drives home with the man stuck in her windshield to wait for him to die.
Invincible Pictures has set an Oct. 25 home-video release date for director Srdjan Spasojevic’s controversial porn-snuff frightener A Serbian Film. The much maligned film, banned from this year’s Film4 Frightfest and dropped by Netflix from its service, is available in stores, on Amazon, at its website and on FlixFling.com.
A Serbian Film tells the horrifying story of a downtrodden ex-porn star trying to make ends meet for his family by taking a role in a privately funded fetish video that involves acts both immoral and illegal. The film’s most shocking scenes include machete sex, eye-socket rape, torture, and newborn rape.
Malaysian model/actress Natassia Malthe is set to reprise her role as deadly dhampir (half vampire/half human) Rayne in German director Uwe Boll’s BloodRayne 4, the latest chapter in the popular home video franchise based on the Terminal Reality video game of the same name.
No word on what sinister forces Malthe will face in the new BloodRayne movie, but whatever they may be chances are she’ll do it naked. The 37-year-old stunner has already gone nude while battling evil in BloodRayne 3: The Third Reich, the 2005 Last House on the Left ripoff Chaos and the possession thriller Devil’s Highway.
Malthe’s other genre creds include Boll’s Bloodrayne 2: Deliverance, Universal’s Alone in the Dark 2, the werewolf thriller Skinwalkers, superhero flick Electra (she shared a kiss with Jennifer Garner), Halloween: Resurrection, the David E. Kelly penned creature-feature Lake Placid, and the stupidly awesome DOA: Dead or Alive.
Up next are roles in writer/director Matthew Schilling’s feature film debut Avarice (opposite Kevin Sorbo) and Boll’s … In the Name of the King 2 (with Dolph Lundgren).
Naughty Dog’s eagerly anticipated adventure game “Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception” will hit the streets on Nov. 1. To promote the release in Japan, Sony tapped Harrison Ford to play a demo of the game and filmed his reactions and thoughts.
Peep it:
Ford, whom game developers have cited as an inspiration for protagonist Nathan Drake, had never played any of the “Uncharted” games before and was quite impressed with it’s action and humor. The beloved 69-year-old actor also compared “Drake’s Deception” to working in movies.
He says:
I think it’s remarkable. The storytelling is very visual and exciting and the action just keeps on coming. I think it’s very realistic and very dramatic. I love the reality of the character’s reactions to the situations he’s in. It’s very exciting.
There’s so much more action here than there is normally in a movie. It’s so much more concentrated. Of course, there are a lot more, when you’re an actor playing in a role, there are a lot of other obligations that you have, but it’s very much like being in the movie for me. Except, the movie I always win. In the game, sometimes I don’t win.
My wife and I love Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars, and just about every Ford film out there. But, if we see him playing “Uncharted 3” on multiplayer, we won’t hesitate to go all Regarding Henry on his ass and put a cap in his head.
Curnan Pictures has released a trailer for Cyborg director Albert Pyun’s new green-screened pulp thriller Road to Hell (think Sin City on a porn budget). The flick stars B-lister Michael Pare as Cody, a soldier-turned-serial-killer looking to find his childhood sweetheart.
“Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s” Clare Kramer (pictured above) and “Boston Public’s” Courtney Peldon play Caitlin and Ash, the sexy hot-to-trot spree killers Cody runs into while on the road to a place called Edge City.
