Production has begun on Universal 1440 Entertainment’s Curse of Chucky, the fifth installment in the outrageous Child’s Play franchise. The film, said to be a return to the series darker roots, picks up after the events of Child’s Play 3, skipping over comedic sequels Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky.

Directed by franchise creator and writer Don Mancini, Curse of Chucky once again features Brad Dourif as the voice of Chucky and stars his sister Fiona Dourif (“True Blood”), Danielle Bisutti (pictured), A Martinez (“Santa Barbara”) and Brennan Elliott (Double Jeopardy).

The official synopsis reads:

Nica (Dourif) is grieving over the gruesome suicide of her mother when her domineering older sister, Barb (Bisutti), arrives with her young family in tow to help settle their mother’s affairs.

As the sisters butt heads over Nica’s plans for the future, Barb’s young daughter comforts herself with a grinning, red-haired talking doll named Chucky that recently arrived mysteriously in the mail. But as a string of brutal murders begins to terrorize the household, Nica suspects the doll may hold the key to the bloodshed.

What she doesn’t know is that Chucky has a personal score to settle. He’s determined to finish a job he started more than 20 years earlier, and this time he’s going to see it through to the bloody and shocking end.

Curse of Chucky is being shot in Winnipeg and will be released as a DVD original by Universal Home Entertainment.

Paramount Pictures and MGM have released the first trailer for Dead Snow director Tommy Wirkola’s Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, a steam-punk version of the classic fairy tale that finds the siblings hunting down supernatural forces for profit.

Jeremy Renner (Bourne Legacy) and Gemma Arterton (Clash of the Titans) are toplining the film, which is now set to open on Jan. 11, 2013. Costars include Famke Janssen (X-Men), Zoe Bell (Death Proof) and Norwegian actress Ingrid Bolsø Berdal (Cold Prey) as evil witches.

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Spy Kids franchise child star Alexa Vega is all growns up and eager for the movie-going world to take her breasts seriously. That is why the now 24-year-old Latina is playing whore house hitwoman KillJoy in Robert Rodriguez’s Machete Kills, a sequel to the director’s 2010 grind-house actioner Machete.

Vega, who tweeted the above photo of her costars in July, told THR that she took the sexy role in an effort to embrace her sexuality, recanting how Rodriguez, who directed her in Spy Kids, approached her for the part by saying “I have a role for you, but I don’t know if you’re ready to do this.”

Vega told THR:

I’ve never done anything like this. I’d never felt comfortable enough, and I never thought this would be the project where I’d take a step forward.

The first time I walked out in my outfit on set, everyone was like, ‘Wow, you’re not allowed to wear that!’

This was all about owning my sexuality. I worked really hard for it in a way that I never had to work hard for something before.

Machete Kills follows ex-Federale Machete (Danny Trejo) as he’s recruited by the U.S. government to bring down a billionaire arms dealer (Mel Gibson) threatening global warfare with a high-tech space weapon. Costars include Charlie Sheen, Sofia Vergara, Zoe Saldana, Amber Heard, Vanessa Hudgens, twins Elise and Electra Avellan, Lady Gaga and returning players Jessica Alba and Michelle Rodriguez.

The film is slated for release next year.

“Mad Men” star Christina Hendricks is set to star in How to Catch a Monster, a sci-fi thriller written and directed by actor Ryan Gosling (Drive), who also co-produces through his Phantasma Films with Marc Platt Productions. Production is slated for Spring 2013.

Described as a modern day fairy tale with elements of “fantasy noir and suspense,” How to Catch a Monster finds Hendricks playing a single mother of two who follows her teen son to a secret under water city where women only wear bikinis (I lie because I wanna make you happy).

Hendricks and Gosling last worked together on director Nicolas Winding Refn’s stylish 2011 actioner Drive, about a getaway driver-for-hire who gets into trouble when he decides to take a risky job to help a mother and her young son. Hendricks played double-crosser Blanche.

Image Works Entertainment has released a trailer for Swedish director Daniel Fridell’s upcoming 3-D remake of Ataru Oikawa’s creepy J-Horror frightener Apartment 1303. The film stars Mischa Barton (“The O.C.”), Rebecca De Mornay (Mother’s Day), and Julianne Michelle (Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps).

Apartment 1303 follows a young woman, who while  investigating the mysterious suicide of her sister, discovers a malevolent force that may have caused her sibling—and many women before her—to jump to their deaths from the room’s 13-story balcony.

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Cinetel has tapped SAW IV and Chain Letter scribe Thomas Fenton to write the sequel to Steven R. Monroe’s I Spit On Your Grave, a 2010 remake of Meir Zarchi’s controversial 1978 rape-revenge thriller. No word on whether Monroe will return to helm the project, Bloody-Disgusting reports.

Monroe’ I Spit On Your Grave starred newcomer Sarah Butler as Jennifer Hill, a young novelist on a mission to maim, dismember, and murder the men who brutally and repeatedly raped her while on holiday in the woods. The film made Clatto’s list of 2010’s Sexiest Horror Films (yeah, we’re bad people).

In an interview with Dread Central, Butler expressed interest in reprising her role in the sequel and revealed that the remake’s script included unshot scenes that found her character back in the city taking meetings with her literary agent and torturing a new male victim.

The very last little bit was Jennifer walking into her apartment, and in the manuscript it was completely covered in white plastic from floor to ceiling and there was a man tied up and hanging from the ceiling, and Jennifer said something like, ‘Honey, I’m home.

Of course, Fenton could also find inspiration for the sequel by watching I Will Dance On Your Grave: Savage Vengeance, an unofficial 1993 sequel to Zarchi’s I Spit On Your Grave that finds Jennifer Hill heading back to the woods with a girlfriend. Gang rape and murder quickly ensues.

British actress Julia Ormond (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) is set to topline “Witches of East End,” a Lifetime pilot based on the 2011  Melissa de la Cruz bestseller about a family of witches. If picked up, the series will be Ormond’s first.

Deadline reports that Ormond will play Joanna Beauchamp, a small-town art teacher who when faced with a dangerous threat to her family reveals to her two adult daughters that they were born witches and that they must embrace their powers.

Ormond’s genre creds include the Lindsay Lohan thriller I Know Who Killed Me and Jennifer Lynch’s twisted serial killer drama Surveillance. She will next be seen in Lynch’s Chained as the mother of a boy who is abducted by a homicidal maniac who forces him to keep his murder house tidy.

Jason Momoa (“Game of Thrones,” Conan) and pretty up-and-comer Merritt Patterson (The Hole) are joining Lucas Till (X-Men: First Class) in screenwriter David Hayter’s (The Scorpion King) feature film directorial debut Wolves.

Set to shoot in the Fall in Toronto, the film follows an 18-year-old orphan (Till) trying to discover the truth about his ancestry after the murder of his parents. No word on what roles Momoa and Patterson play, but it’s pretty obvious that Momoa will be Till’s love interest while Patterson plays the hairy werewolf.

Momoa, who got his start on “Baywatch: Hawaii” and “Stargate: Atlantis,” came to fame last year as Conan the Barbarian in the Conan remake and as the awesome Khal Drogo on HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” Patterson played “Pretty Girl 2” in Percy Jackson and the Olympians and can soon be seen in Joe Dante’s upcoming family-frightener The Hole.

Anchor Bay Films has released a new trailer for filmmakers Bega Jguburia and Levan Bakhia’s 247°F, a confined-space thriller that finds Christina Ulloa (“Charmed”) and Scout Taylor-Compton (Rob Zombie’s Halloween) trapped in a sauna with nothing but their tiny bikinis to help them.

247°F was shot in Georgia and costars Travis Van Winkle (Friday the 13), Michael Copon (The Scorpion King: Rise of a Warrior), and Tyler Mane (X-Men). The film arrives on DVD and Blu-ray on Oct. 23.

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A minute-long promo trailer for iconic director Brian de Palma’s Passion, an American remake of the French erotic thriller Love Crime, has gone online. The film’s story centers on a beautiful business woman’s ill-fated manipulation and seduction of her naive protégé.

Passion stars Rachel McAdams as boss bitch Christine and Noomi Rapace as her seemingly weak assistant. Dominic Cooper (Devil’s Double), Paul Anderson (A Lonely Place to Die), Karoline Herfurth (We Are the Night) and Rainer Bock (Inglourious Basterds) round out the cast.

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