Katee Sackhoff (“BattlestarGalactica”) is set to join Karen Gillan (“Dr. Who”) in Film District and Intrepid Pictures’ new supernatural thriller Oculus. The film is directed by Mike Flanagan (Absentia), from a script by Flanagan and Jeff Howard, and is slated to go into production in the Fall.
Oculus follows a twenty-something brother and sister (Gillan) duo orphaned as children after the mysterious murder of their parents, of which the brother is charged with by authorities. His sister, however, continues to believe that a haunted antique mirror is truly responsible for their deaths.
Sackhoff will play Gillan’s mother in the film. The project is the latest in a string of genre offerings the 32-year-old has coming down the pike, including Sexy Evil Genius, theLionsgate sequel The Haunting in Georgiaand Vin Diesel’s sci-fi actioner Riddick.
Alliance Films has released a seriously creepy trailer for Blumhouse Productions’ Sinister, a supernatural thriller that stars Ethan Hawke as a true crime novelist who discovers a box of film reels depicting a series of brutal family murders at his new home.
Things only get worse when it becomes apparent that the killer is a member of heavy metal outfit Slipknot… or a something not human. The film is directed by Scott Derrickson and costars Vincent D’Onofrio (Chained), Juliet Rylance (Animal) and James Ransone (“Treme”).
Brandon Cronenberg, son of body horror icon David Cronenberg, is proving to be a chip off the old block with his directorial debut Antiviral, a disturbing thriller about a clinic that offers paying customers the opportunity to be infected with diseases carried by their favorite celebrity crushes.
Hmm. Think I’d pass on that service. I already suffer from exhaustion and alcoholism. That’s all the celebrity illness I can handle.
HBO has released a trailer for he BBC2 network’s Alfred Hitchcock-based tele-pic The Girl, premiering on HBO on Oct. 20. Directed by Julian Jarrold from a script by Gwyneth Hughes, the film examines the iconic filmmaker’s obsessive relationship with Tippi Hedren.
According to Hughes’ research, which includes interviews with a now 81-year-old Hedren and surviving members of Hitchcock’s film crews, Hitchcock grew obsessed with the alluring blonde starlet—then an aspiring fashion model—while taking her under his wing during the making of The Birds and Marnie.
The Girl stars Sienna Miller (G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra) as Hedren, Toby Jones (The Hunger Games) as Hitchcock, Imelda Staunton (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) as his wife Alma Hitchcock and Penelope Wilton (Shaun of the Dead) as his assistant Peggy Robertson.
Lionsgate and Millennium Films have released the first official trailer for director John Luessenhop’s Texas Chainsaw 3-D, a sequel to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre that picks up decades after the events of the 1974 Tobe Hooper classic.
The film opens in theaters on Jan. 4.
Peep it:
The synopsis reads:
Decades later and hundreds of miles away from the original massacre, a young woman named Heather learns that she has inherited a Texas estate from a grandmother she never knew she had.
After embarking on a road trip with friends to uncover her roots, she finds she is the sole owner of a lavish, isolated Victorian mansion. But her newfound wealth comes at a price as she stumbles upon a horror that awaits her in the mansion’s dank cellars.
Bereavement stunner Alexandra Daddario toplines the cast which also includes Tania Raymonde (“LOST”), Sue Rock (Varsity Blues), Scott Eastwood (Enter Nowhere), Shaun Sipos (“Melrose Place”), rapper Trey Songz, Thom Barry (“Cold Case”), Richard Riehle (Office Space), Bill Moseley (Manson Girls) and Dan Yeager as Leatherface.
Universal Pictures has released a trailer for Mama, a supernatural thriller produced by Guillermo del Toro (Pacific Rim) and directed by newcomer Andy Muschietti. The film stars Jessica Chastain (pictured), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (“Game of Thrones”) and kid actors Megan Charpentier and Isabelle Nélisse.
Mama tells the story of two young sisters (Charpentier, Nélisse) found five years later after disappearing from their suburban neighborhood by their Uncle Lucas (Coster-Waldau) and his girlfriend Annabel (Chastain), who fears that a malicious force is haunting the girls.
British actor Freddie Highmore has scored the role of Norman Bates on A&E’s “Bates Motel,” a prequel series to Hitchcock’s Psycho from Carlton Cuse (“LOST”) and Kerry Ehrin (”Friday Night Lights”). The 20-year-old is best known for his roles in Finding Neverland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
“Bates Motel” examines how Norman Bates psyche developed from his childhood through his teen years and how his twisted relationship with his mother Norma Louise Bates—played by Vera Farmiga—shaped him into a psycho killer.
TVGuide, which broke the news, had spoken with Cuse earlier about the Norman Bates casting and were told by the famed producer that his choice would not be what fans expect. Personally, I think the kid is creepy looking. I could totally picture him stuffing his mother.
“Bates Motel” is slated to shoot in October for a 2013 premiere.
An unrated trailer for British director Alex Chandon’s Inbred has gone online. I’ve never heard of the chap, but his take on the hillbilly genre appears to offer some refreshingly twisted thrills: gas nozzle down the throat, girl threatened with a large phallic squash , female twins with horses (giddy-up, ladies)!
Still need a plot? Fine. Four young hooligans are sentenced to community service in the remote Yorkshire village of Mortlake, where they and their assigned care workers are hunted down to be made a part of an inbred variety show.
Inbred arrives in theaters in the U.K. on Sept. 21 before debuting on DVD and Blu-ray on Oct. 15.
Prepare to peep Piper’s pair-a-boobs… OK, that was awful. I now know what’s it like to write like Mr. Skin. But, what’s important here is the news coming out of the Toronto International Film Festival: Piper Perabo (“Covert Affairs,” Coyote Ugly) goes topless in director Rian Johnson’s third feature film Looper.
Looper takes place in a future where time travel can be purchased on the black market. and usually is by mobsters who send their marks 30-years into the past to be rubbed out by well-paid assassins known as Loopers.
Unfortunately, when the mob decides to “close the loop,” the Looper’s future persona is sent back in time to be killed by the Loop himself. Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Dark Knight Rises) plays Looper Joe in the film. Bruce Willis (Expendables 2) is Joe Sr.
But, really, the film is about Perabo’s showgirl character, who must race against time to get topless. It hits theaters on Sept. 28.
A trailer for director Robert Cuffley’s new thriller Ferocious has gone online. The film stars Amanda Crew as Leigh, a popular American actress out to retrieve the humiliating sex tape that she shot during her days as a stripper in a seedy nightclub run by a scumbag named Maurice, played by “Sons of Anarchy’s” Kim Coates.
Crew made her feature film debut in the 2006 frightener Final Destination 3. She has since gone on to star in Rampart Films’ upcoming sci-fi drama The Repeaters, the 2008 Lionsgate sleeper A Haunting in Connecticut and Summit’s criminally underrated—but hilarious—Sex Drive.
