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On launch, New World broke records and amassed a massive playerbase of over one million concurrent players. But like my high school bully, that towering monstrosity of an MMORPG somehow managed to peak quickly and drop off the face of the planet. Despite the lackluster reception after its first month, Amazon Game…

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Theo James

There’s a new film called The Hole coming our way from South Korean director Kim Jee-woon, and a press release has revealed that Theo James of The Gentlemen, the Divergent films, and the upcoming Osgood Perkins / Stephen King movie The Monkey is set to star in it. James will be taking on the role of Owen, a successful professor living abroad in South Korea, who is bedridden after a devastating car accident that killed his wife, Sandy. He is left under the care of Yuna, his Korean mother-in-law — but when she starts to unravel the devastating truth behind Owen and Sandy’s marriage, and Owen himself, his road to recovery is threatened.

Scripted by Christopher Chen, The Hole is based on the 2017 Shirley Jackson Award winning novel of the same name by Hye-young Pyun. This adaptation is being produced by Esmail Corp, K Period Media, and Anthology Studios. The Veterans will be representing international distribution rights at the American Film Market next week. CAA Media Finance and UTA Independent Film Group are representing the US rights. Individual producers are Sam Esmail, Chad Hamilton, and Nick Krishnamurthy of Esmail Corp; Kimberly Steward and Alex Foster of K Period Media, and Andy Sorgie of Paisan. Jee-woon is also producing, as is Jay Choi. Soon Ho Song who will serve as a co-producer for Anthology Studios.

The press release notes that the story will be told in a combination of English and Korean, as it takes place in both the United States and South Korea. Filming will take place in both countries, with production expected to start in the first or second quarter of 2025.

The novel had the following description: Oghi has woken from a coma after causing a devastating car accident that took his wife’s life and left him paralyzed and badly disfigured. His caretaker is his mother-in-law, a widow grieving the loss of her only child. Oghi is neglected and left alone in his bed. His world shrinks to the room he lies in and his memories of his troubled relationship with his wife, a sensitive, intelligent woman who found all of her life goals thwarted except for one: cultivating the garden in front of their house. But soon Oghi notices his mother-in-law in the abandoned garden, uprooting what his wife had worked so hard to plant and obsessively digging larger and larger holes. When asked, she answers only that she is finishing what her daughter started. A bestseller in Korea, award-winning author Hye-young Pyun’s The Hole is a superbly crafted and deeply unnerving novel about the horrors of isolation and neglect in all of its banal and brutal forms. As Oghi desperately searches for a way to escape, he discovers the difficult truth about his wife and the toll their life together took on her.

Kim Jee-woon’s previous directing credits include The Quiet Family, The Foul King, A Tale of Two Sisters, A Bittersweet Life, The Good the Bad the Weird, I Saw the Devil, the Arnold Schwarzenegger film The Last Stand, The Age of Shadows, Ilang: The Wolf Brigade, Untact, and Cobweb (the South Korean movie, not the horror film produced by Seth Rogen).

Does The Hole sound interesting to you? Have you read the Hye-young Pyun novel the film will be based on? Share your thoughts on this Theo James / Kim Jee-woon collaboration by leaving a comment below!

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David Dastmalchian

Mike Flanagan and David Dastmalchian are both prominent figures in the horror world, so it’s somewhat surprising that their first collaboration came not on a horror project, but on Flanagan’s upcoming movie The Life of Chuck – which, despite being a Stephen King adaptation, is a drama. Today, Deadline has announced that Flanagan and Dastmalchian are set to work together again… and this time the project is a horror film. Flanagan will be producing Epilogue, which Dastmalchian will star in alongside Flanagan’s wife and frequent collaborator Kate Siegel. Michael Fimognari, who worked as cinematographer on most of Flanagan’s work and directed episodes of The Midnight Club and The Fall of the House of Usher (not to mention the films To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You and To All the Boys: Always and Forever), will be directing, working from a screenplay by Luke Barnett and Tanner Thomason.

An action horror story, Epilogue is set one year after the zombie apocalypse has supposedly come to an end and will follow a desperate couple who set out to find a cure for their infected daughter. The Coven will be launching distribution sales next week at the American Film Market.

Flanagan is producing the film for Red Room Pictures. Also producing are Courtney Petrakis, Brittney McDade, and Broken Road Productions’ Todd Garner.

In addition to The Life of Chuck, Dastmalchian’s acting credits include Afraid, The Last Voyage of the Demeter, The Boogeyman, Oppenheimer, Boston Strangler, Late Night with the Devil, the Ant-Man films, Dune: Part One, The Suicide Squad, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, Bird Box, Blade Runner 2049, Twin Peaks, The Belko Experiment, Prisoners, and The Dark Knight. Siegel is also in The Life of Chuck, as well as The Fall of the House of Usher, The Wrath of Becky, Hypnotic, Midnight Mass, The Haunting of Bly Manor, The Haunting of Hill House, Gerald’s Game, Ouija: Origin of Evil, Hush, and Oculus, among other titles.

Are you glad to hear that Michael Fimognari, Mike Flanagan, David Dastmalchian, and Kate Siegel are teaming up for a zombie movie? Share your thoughts on Epilogue by leaving a comment below.

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Venom: The Last Dance, Here, Tom Hanks, box office

While I wonder where all the trick-or-treaters have gone, they could be at the theater enjoying another spin on the dancefloor with Sony’s Venom: The Last Dance. The symbiotic sequel took a bite out of $2.8M at the Halloween box office on Thursday, quickly slithering into the top spot above preview screenings for Robert Zemeckis’ Here, starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. Zemeckis’ heartfelt (if uneven) drama banked $475K, with shows beginning at 2 PM at 2,402 locations.

Sony hopes Venom: The Last Dance, directed by franchise vet Kelly Marcel, could make as much as $20M in its second week after a weak debut in the States with $51M. Venom: The Last Dance, which stars Tom Hardy, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Juno Temple, Rhys Ifans, and Clask Backo, sits at $184.5M worldwide, though Sony hopes the film has legs throughout its theatrical run. Meanwhile, Miramax thinks Here, a fixed camera angle drama focusing on a family throughout generations, could earn $7M over the weekend despite weak review scores, including a $38% Rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Quorum, who tracks a film’s performance throughout its theatrical run, thinks Sony has stones for releasing a tentpole film so close to the 2024 Presidential Election race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. As each candidate approaches the final lap of their respective campaign roadmaps, the contentious race is all any news outlet can talk about, making little room for cinematic fanfare. Sony’s recent run of superhero films (Morbius, Madame Web) isn’t doing Venom: The Last Dance any favors, as critics and fans mercilessly panned both movies. While Tom Hardy’s Venom has a built-in fanbase and surprisingly good luck at the box office, audiences are distracted, anxious, and hard-up for dollars. These circumstances make going to the movies a second thought, especially considering how fast movies are released on Digital in a post-pandemic market.

Here’s hoping Sony’s Kraven the Hunter, releasing on December 12, fares better. The upcoming anti-hero film focuses on Kraven’s (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) complex relationship with his ruthless father, Nikolai Kravinoff, which starts him down a path of vengeance with brutal consequences, motivating him to become not only the greatest hunter in the world but also one of its most feared.

What are you seeing at the theater this weekend? Let us know in the comments section below.

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