Lara Flynn Boyle is set to star in director Duane Journey’s Black Forest: Hansel and Gretel & The 420 Witch, a stoner re-imagining of the classic Grimm brothers fairy tale. The 41-year-old stunner will play an evil witch who, after baiting teens into her house with some wicked pot, eats them to maintain her youthful appearance.
Joining Boyle in the project as siblings Hansel and Gretel are Twilight Saga star Michael Welch and 18-year-old “Castle” cutie Molly Quinn. The film, written by David Tillman (Vampire Survivor), will begin production on Nov. 12 in Los Angeles. Indies Dark Highway Films, KK&P, and Uptik Entertainment are all producing.
Boyle is best known for her roles as Donna Hayward on “Twin Peaks” and Serleena, a sexy shape-shifting alien queen, in Men in Black II. Other notable genre turns include MGM’s Poltergeist 3 (her horror debut at age 18), Tom Holland’s psycho-bitch thriller The Temp, and Lifetime’s small-screen adaptation of author Ann Rivers Siddons’ 1978 mystery novel The House Next Door.
Hills Have Eyes starlet Vinessa Shaw will topline screenwriter Jesse Peyronel feature film debut Siren, a modern day fairy tale about a woman whose scent is so overwhelmingly pleasing it makes her irresistible to men (where I come from, we call those women strippers).
It’s really a grounded intimate look at someone who has a special ability but looked at in a personal way. It’s takes a more a realistic look at an X-Men-style power.
Oddly enough, I exude a special smell that drives people away from me. But, I can only initiate the power after consuming Taco Bell cheesy bean & rice burritos.
Siren is produced by Eccho Media and costars Bess Wohl (Flightplan), Rob Kazinsky (Pacific Rim) and Ross Partridge (Prom Night). Production is currently underway in Massachusetts.
Shaw’s genre creds include the 1981 Thanksgiving Day slasher Home Sweet Home (in which she made her acting debut at the age of five), the Disney witch comedy Hocus Pocus, indie-frightener Stag Night, and Alexandre Aja’s 2006 remake of Wes Craven’s horror classic The Hills Have Eyes.
A trailer for Relativity Media’s new period thriller The Raven is now online. Set in 1849 Baltimore, the James McTeigue-directed film follows famed novelist Edgar Allan Poe (John Cusack) as he attempts to rescue his wife (Alice Eve) from a serial killer inspired by his most gruesome works.
I caught an early screening of The Raven some months back and found it to be quite stylish and suspenseful. I would write a proper review, but the folks behind the film are threatening to bury my PS3 loved ones if I dare spill on its twists and turns.
The cast of AMC’s critically acclaimed zombie-apocalypse series “The Walking Dead” are spilling on season two of the show in a new four-minute-plus featurette that gives fans a taste of what’s to come and a glimpse at some of the new faces they’ll be seeing … ripped off.
“The Walking Dead” will have its 90-minute premiere on Sunday, Oct. 16. Six hour-long episodes will air during the following weeks before the show takes a short hiatus and returns on Sunday, Feb. 12 (just in time for sweeps).
You may not know aspiring actress Jen Dance, but you will Down the Road. The pretty 20-year-old model is making her feature film debut in the new indie frightener from writer/director Jason Christopher. Dance plays an emotionally unstable girl taken on a camping trip by friends who start to mysteriously disappear.
Down the Road costars Chelsey Garner (Killer Shorts 2), Shaun Paul Costello (“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”), Chris Ready (Bloodlust Zombies), David J Bonner (Six Degrees of Hell), and beloved genre treasure Clint Howard (Bloodrayne: The Third Reich).
To learn a little more about Dance, go here. To keep up with the film, visit the Down the Road Facebook page.
Russian model-turned-actress Olga Fonda has barely got any acting creds under her garter belt, but the 29-year-old stunner lives life like a God—in her underwear, playing Rubik’s Cube.
Esquire recently dropped in on the Real Steel starlet to shoot yet another Pulitzer worthy Me In My Place video. If you’re feeling a little too under-dressed to visit their site, don’t worry … I gotcha covered.
Brothers Paul and Benjamin China will hold the world premiere of their feature film debut Crawl, an Australian home invasion thriller, at this year’s Screamfest film festival in Los Angeles. Aussie actress Georgina Haig toplines the film as a waitress held captive in her house after getting caught up in a murder plot.
Peep it:
The official synopsis reads:
A seedy bar owner hires a mysterious Croatian to murder an acquaintance over an unpaid debt. The crime is carried out, but a planned double-crossing backfires, and an innocent waitress suddenly becomes involved.
Now a hostage in her own home, the young woman is driven to desperate measures for survival. A suspenseful, yet darkly humorous chain of events builds to a blood-curdling and unforgettable climax.
The Crawl premiere will be held at noon on Oct. 27 at the Mann’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Blvd. To purchase tickets, go here.
Heig’s creds include the 2010 Screen Australia supernatural killer-truck frightener Road Kill and the 2009 high school-set psych-thriller Wasted on the Young. She was also up for the role of Gwen Stacy in Columbia Pictures’ Marc Webb-directed Spiderman reboot, but lost out to Emma Stone.
While Dianna Agron is the “Glee” star least deserving of being hunted down for brutal slaughter (the Downs kid and the fat “sassy” black chick top my list), so could be her fate in the new Lionsgate survival frightener The Hunters.
Agron, who is coming off DreamWorks’ sci-fi actioner I Am Number 4, plays a graduating high school senior who heads off to the woods to celebrate with friends, but ends up stalked by a group of homicidal gamesmen.
The Hunters is directed by some guy named Chris Briant and will be available on DVD and On Demand on Dec. 27.
Finally, some exciting news from Rob Zombie’s Lords of Salem camp: Sheri Moon Zombie has joined the rock-and-roll witchcraft frightener. OK … so Zombie’s old lady scoring a role in her husband’s flick ain’t much of a surprise—it’s still a far more thrilling bit of casting than say Bruce Dern.
Bloody-Disgusting confirmed the casting this morning, but there’s no word on what role Sheri would be playing (but, the film does revolve around a “blonde rocker chick” who dj’s at a radio station.)
The Lords of Salem follows a 300-year-old coven of witches masquerading as a rock outfit to take over a small town. Oren Peli, Jason Blum, and Steven Schneider—the team behind Paranormal Activity and Insidious—will produce through their company Haunted Films.
Additional costars so far include Torsten Voges (the humorless giant German doc in Judd Apatow’s Funny People), Jeff Daniel Phillips (one half of the caveman pitching team for Geico Insurance), Meg Foster (They Live) and Ernest Thomas (Rog from “What’s Happening”).
Canadian actress Allie MacDonald is set to star opposite Stephen Moyer and Mia Kirshner in director Darren Lynn Bousman’s (Saw 2, 3, 4) upcoming Jersey Devil project The Barrens. The pretty 23-year-old Canuck will play Sadie Vinyard, daughter to Moyer and Kirshner’s characters Richard and Cynthia Vinyard.
The Barrens follows the Vinyard family as they set out to camp in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, home to the legendary cryptid known as the Jersey Devil. When Richard falls terribly ill, he begins to believe that they are being stalked by the creature.
The film, written by Bousman, costars Erik Knudsen (Scream 4), J. Larose (Saw 3), kid actor Peter DaCunha and Max Topplin (Dead Before Dawn 3-D). Anchor Bay Entertainment will release The Barrens next fall.
MacDonald doesn’t have a lot of creds under her acting belt, but she’ll soon be seen starring alongside Oscar nominated actress Jennifer Lawrence (Hunger Games) and Elisabeth Shue (Piranha 3-D) in director Mark Tonderai’s (Hush) new thriller House at the End of the Street.
