Last year, Jamie Foxx was hospitalized under mysterious conditions. Questions, concerns and conspiracy theories arose online when people speculated about the situation when the severity of it came to light. Foxx and his family remained extremely private during that time and Foxx will now tell his story to the world. He explained, “Everybody wants to know what happened, and I’m going to tell you what happened. But I’ve gotta do it in my way. I’m gonna do it in a funny way. We’re gonna be on the stage. We’re gonna get back to the standup sort of roots.” Foxx previewed the audience, saying, “It’ll be called, What Had Happened Was, and it’s got all the things that happened, especially on our side of our community.”
Enter the teaser trailer for What Had Happen Was…, which is Foxx’s newest comedy special from Netflix. At the time that Jamie advertised for tickets to this live show, the post read, “Join us for an unforgettable one-man show as Jamie Foxx takes the stage to share his journey through a serious health scare, filled with humor, heart, and inspiration! Experience Jamie Foxx like never before in this intimate and engaging performance, as he opens up about his struggles, triumphs, and everything in between. Get ready for a night of laughter, reflection, and genuine connection. Don’t miss this exclusive one-man show!”
When he first made the announcement of the show, Jamie poked fun at the conspiracy theories that his public appearances during that time was a double, “I dove out of a car to save this Black woman’s purse. That ain’t no damn Jamie, that’s a clone.” The star would also address the new lease on life he’s gained since he was discharged from the hospital, “I’m so thankful. And I just get emotional. Because it was really… it’s beyond the scope. Cherish life. I have some people in my life that really made sure I was here because it was dire straits.” However, Foxx would then joke how insufferable his joy became for his family, “I was drinking some water, like ‘Wow, you taste this water? It’s so wet. This is the wettest water’ [and his daughter responded,] ‘Dad, you’ve gotta chill out.’”
Way back in March of 1927, famed writer HP Lovecraft wrote the science-fiction/horror short story The Colour Out of Space. In the story, a meteorite crashes in the fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts. Fifty years later, the people who lived there suffered greatly. Their crops grow bountiful but rotten on the inside, their animals become mutated, and eventually, they themselves are driven to insanity and death. Not only was this Lovecraft’s favorite personal short story but would become one of his most well-regarded works. Sixty years later, in 1987, a film based on Lovecraft’s short story went into production under the title The Farm. What would follow was the financial failure of a movie with stories behind the scenes more grotesque than its monsters. Yet, it still somehow spawned three even more unheard-of and totally unconnected sequels. This is the story of What the F*ck Happened to The Curse?
This second on-screen iteration of HP Lovecraft’s short story would be adapted for the screen by A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge scribe David Chaskin. Actor David Keith was then brought on board to direct. You may recognize Keith from his acting in such films as An Officer and a Gentleman, the 2002 Carrie remake, or my personal favorite: as the asshole White Sox catcher Jack Parkman in Major League 2. He definitely has the face of one of those actors who you point to Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood-style and go “Hey, I know that guy from somewhere!” Though it was his first time behind the camera, Keith had the assistance of famed Italian horror film director Lucio Fulci on the set. Fulci’s place there, however, is a matter of contention. For starters, Fulci was credited as Lois Fulci. This is because they changed most of the Italian crew members names in the credit to make them sound more American. The first alarm bell of many that may pop up as we go through the story of the aptly titled The Curse…
Fulci was listed in the credits as a Producer and Special Effects Designer on the film. Which Producer Ovidio Assonitis disputes. He claims Fulci was merely there as a second unit director. Still yet, so many moments in The Curse resemble Fulci’s previous work that it has led some to wonder if Fulci did far more than just direct the second unit or handle the special effects. Perhaps in a Steven Spielberg/Tobe Hooper, “who really directed Poltergeist?” sort of way. In this case, we are unlikely to ever know. This film is not something many people involved in the production seem willing to discuss. For a multitude of reasons.
The film would star Wil Wheaton in his first theatrical part since his performance in Stand by Me put the world on notice the year before. Wheaton played Zack, a teenage boy who was forced into a new family when his mother Alice (Kathleen Jordon Gregory) married Nathan (Claude Adkins). Nathan was… how to put this…. a complete and unfathomable asshole. He was a domineering farmer and father who used the word of his God as an excuse to physically and emotionally keep his kids and wife in line. When he’s not striking the children, he’s telling his wife that her biscuits are dry. That or, demeaning her for trying to get some adult time with him in the bedroom. But Nathan gets what he deserves. Both in his demise (in the form of a pitchfork through the gut) and in the fact that his wife ends up going outside in the middle of the night to bang an extremely creepy barn dude. Don’t ask me why this scene even exists because I won’t have an answer. But damn that guy was hairy. This completely pointless love making scene also happens to be the moment that a meteor arrives at the farm, putting into motion events that poison the water and turn everything to gooey death.
Wheaton’s real-life younger sister Amy Wheaton was cast as his innocent and loving little sister in the film; Opposite his new stepbrother: a mouth-breathing and obnoxious Cyrus. Think of Cyrus as the annoying Friday the 13th Part V chocolate bar guy, only as the entitled favorite child of your asshole step dad. The punchable character was played by Malcolm Danare, who Wheaton would later say was “kind and gentle” in real life, making him and his sister feel a little safer. Which, after the meteorite lands, our characters are anything but.
Once the meteorite melts into the ground and infiltrates the water of this small Tennessee community, they chalk it up to… and I quote… airplane “dookie” that froze on its way down and then melted. There-forth anything that comes into contact with the water is infected. Plants become robust but diseased with worms and other exploding nastiness. The cows grow giant pulsating sacs of worms and other goo. Human beings start to grow boils on their faces and end up mutated, murderous monsters. But the hard-headed community is too wrapped up in either their own greed, religion, or simple hard-headedness to do anything about it before it’s too late.
The entire watching experience of The Curse is a strange one. While the story and setting are American-centric, the effects are Italian horror through and through. Disgusting and over the top in a way that even a simple chicken dinner will make you want to hurl. It’s all Fulci, all the time when it comes to the gross-out gags. These same special effects overlaid with the ultra-80s horror score are, to be honest, the only things that truthfully capture your attention in the film. Most of the characters are obnoxious and the movie focuses on some really pointless shit for much of its runtime. A storyline involving the refusal of Nathan to sell his farm and a plot to build a water dam that doesn’t amount to a pile of frozen airplane space dookie story-wise. But as far as nasty horror scenes go? It’s goo gone wild. Nothing in the film, however, is as gross as what allegedly went on behind the scenes according to a now-adult Wil Wheaton….
In a blog post, titled “When you watch The Curse, you are watching two children who were abused and exploited daily during production. No adults protected us”, Wheaton describes a set where both he and his sister were subjected to both physical and mental abuse. He says that he never wanted to do the film and that even as a kid he knew it would be bad for his career at the time. His parents, however, were tempted by the prospect of a hundred thousand dollars (of which he would only make fifteen cents on the dollar), a trip to Rome, and a role for his little sister. Wheaton recalls being beckoned to a meeting about the film with some producers without his agent. His mother instead acted on his behalf in a meeting where he was frightened and pressured by everyone present to sign on to the project. Once in Rome, he says his sister and he were subjected to a bevy of broken child labor laws and forced to work twelve hours a day without any breaks for five days a week. He says he was touched inappropriately twice by two different adults during production and had no faith his mother would do anything about it were she told. He called the director “coked out of his mind most of the time”, alleging he spent most of his time on set sleeping with or trying to sleep with one of the actresses.
Things unfortunately keep getting darker from there. Wheaton says that the cuts on the face of his little sister as he consoles her in the film were not only real… but were put there by the production themselves. He says the makeup department “would literally cut my little sister’s face with a scalpel, in three places, and put bandages over them”. He also says in his blog that Fulci was the second unit director during the scene where his little sister’s character is attacked by the chickens. He claims that Fulci had live chickens thrown at his then nine-year-old sister, tying their legs to her so that they would peck her. And that their mother was on set and supportive of the scene. He also mentions having “buckets of talc, broken wood, bits of wallpaper and plaster” thrown into his face during the collapsing home scene. Shockingly, there’s not a lot out there in terms of a response to these horrid things Wheaton describes in the blog post. Wheaton says that to this day is unable to watch the film and understandably won’t sign any posters or promotional material from it at horror conventions. Which is what prompted him to finally write the blog post as he didn’t want to have to explain this every time someone brought merch from the film to him to sign. Again, understandably.
As a young Wil Wheaton had feared, the film was a total and utter box office flop grossing less than 2 million dollars domestically for distributor Trans World Entertainment. The film developed a small cult following on VHS and eventually DVD, where all three of its sequels would also land. I haven’t taken part in them myself and won’t but it is said that they have virtually nothing in common with the film. The fourth film, for instance, is a 1988 film titled Catacombs with nothing in common with the franchise that they simply renamed it Curse IV: The Ultimate Sacrifice for its VHS release. Some high quality shit we have going on here, folks. Continuing the juxtaposition between the American and Italian horror themes, two different soundtracks were made for the film. An American and Italian version. Each with a ten minute score suite from Black Demons.
The reviews and critical responses to the movie itself are a bit hard to gauge. Some call it an entertaining gross-out film, while others refer to it as “increasingly unwatchable and flat-out incompetent” movie.
As far as the films effect on Wil Wheaton, he says, “Ultimately, as I predicted and feared, this piece of shit movie cashed me out of respectable films forever. I got offers for movies, but they were always mindless comedies or exploitative horror films. They were never the serious dramas I wanted to work in after Stand by Me”. Wheaton would go on to explain that the studios had compared him and River Phoenix to each other since Stand by Me released, wondering which of them was a more bankable star. He noted that they would see Phoenix doing respectable films with Harrison Ford and then see him “in this piece of shit”.
Wheaton would salvage his situation however and go on to play Wesley Crusher in the hit series Star Trek: The Next Generation among many other roles throughout his career.
For those of you who don’t want any part of this film knowing what has been alleged here but still want to see the story of Colour Out of Shape unfold on screen? HP Lovecraft’s work was previously adapted as Die, Monster, Die! starring Boris Karloff. Then again in 2019’s Color Out of Space, directed by The Island of Dr. Moreau’s Richard Stanley and starring the great Nicolas Cage.
And that, my friends, is what happened to The Curse.
A couple of the previous episodes of What Happened to This Horror Movie? can be seen below. To see more, head over to our JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
Last year, Toho released a new Godzilla film, titled Godzilla Minus One (read our review HERE), in Japan on November 3rd, which happens to be Godzilla Day, the anniversary of the 1954 release of the original Godzilla movie. That was the 69th anniversary – and since this year marks the 70th anniversary of the original film, Godzilla Minus One is returning to theatres this weekend… and that’s not the only way Toho is celebrating the anniversary. Today, they have also announced that they’ve given the greenlight to a new Godzilla movie that will be written and directed by Godzilla Minus One mastermind Takashi Yamazaki, who will also be handling the visual effects! The announcement can be seen right here:
Godzilla Minus One saw an already devastated postwar Japan facing a new threat in the form of Godzilla. Toho’s Koji Ueda provided the synopsis: “Set in a post-war Japan, Godzilla Minus One will once again show us a Godzilla that is a terrifying and overwhelming force, which you already get a sense of from the teaser trailer and poster. The concept is that Japan, which had already been devastated by the war, faces a new threat with Godzilla, bringing the country into the ‘minus.’“ The film stars Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada, Munetaka Aoki, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Sakura Ando, and Kuranosuke Sasaki, with music by Naoki Sato. Interestingly, one of Yamazaki’s previous credits is the 2007 film Always: Sunset on Third Street 2, which features a Godzilla cameo in a fantasy sequence.
Details on Yamazaki’s follow-up have not been revealed, but Yamazaki has always been open about the fact that he was hoping to get the chance to make a sequel. He has said, “I would certainly like to see what the sequel would look like. I know that Shikishima’s war seems over, and we’ve reached this state of peace and calm – but perhaps [it’s the] calm before the storm, and the characters have not yet been forgiven for what has been imposed upon them. … I don’t know that anyone has pulled off a more serious tone of kaiju-versus-kaiju with human drama, and that challenge is something that I’d like to explore. When you have movies that feature [kaiju battles], I think it’s very easy to put the spotlight and the camera on this massive spectacle, and it detaches itself from the human drama component.” He went on to say that he would have to “make sure that the human drama and whatever’s happening between [the] kaiju both have meaning, and both are able to affect one another in terms of plot development.“
Are you glad to hear that Takashi Yamazaki will be making a new Godzilla movie? Share your thoughts on this news by leaving a comment below.
Skeleton Crew never say die! At least, that’s what the inspiration behind the new Disney+ series from Lucasfilm seems to be. According to executive producer Jon Favreau, Skeleton Crew took its cue from famous ‘80s coming-of-age favorites, particularly those produced by Steven Spielberg and his Amblin company. A new trailer for Skeleton Crew has just been released by Disney+. A glimpse of a suburban setting, a school, and the upbeat trailer song really drives home the “family adventure” tone for this show. Favreau and Spider-Man: No Way Home director Jon Watts also use the classic mystery and exploration tropes in this Star Wars galaxy. The latest live-action series will premiere on Disney+ on December 3.
The official synopsis for Star Wars: Skeleton Crew reads: “When four kids make a mysterious discovery on their seemingly safe home planet, they get lost in a strange and dangerous galaxy. Finding their way home, meeting unlikely allies and enemies will be a greater adventure than they ever imagined.”
Skeleton Crew also has Jude Law joining the Star Wars universe. The Closer and The Grand Budapest Hotel actor will be playing Jod Na Nawood, a human Jedi who helps the kids (Neel, Fern, Wim, and KB) navigate a complicated world during destructive times. Joining Law for the adventure are Ravi Cabot-Conyers (Wim), Kyriana Kratter (KB), Robert Timothy Smith (Neel), and Ryan Kiera Armstrong (Fern).
When asked to describe the upcoming series, Law told People that Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is “joyful.” He says audiences will enjoy watching the kids get into mischief while approaching places in the Star Wars Universe they should not be. “It is a fun place to be, the universe of Star Wars,” Law said, smiling. “And there are great references to old films and recent episodes and series. There’s a lot of originality and I hope that will bring the feeling of fun to those who watch it.”
Speaking on why he decided to finally join the Star Wars force, so to speak, Jude Law said it took a lot of contemplation because of the scale of the series. “I don’t think I would have dived in willy-nilly. I wanted it to be right. I didn’t want to be the guy that dropped the ball on Star Wars.” Law said there were plenty of challenges in bringing it to the screen. “It’s technically complicated to get those things right — you’re dealing with animatronics and puppets and machines and huge, complicated worlds. I’m the guy that wants to see how the wizard does it.” He, too, got to see how the cinematographer worked in a way like he has never seen before, which further alllwed himself to be immersed in the saga. “There are certain shots they don’t allow you to do if you’re the director. You can’t pass through the glass of the spaceship; you have to stay on the outside or inside. I love that. You see the shot and go, ‘Oh, I’m in Star Wars.”
PLOT: The events and people who occupy a single spot of land are followed from pre-history to 2024.
REVIEW: Robert Zemeckis is a director who’s always been well ahead of the industry regarding technical innovation. Many of his movies, including Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and, yes, even Forrest Gump, are classics. With Here, he once again tries to innovate, with a static shot of a single spot of land being followed from the dinosaur era to today. Most of the film revolves around the inhabitants of a colonial home built for the son of Benjamin Franklin. Eventually, it is occupied by many different families, with the most significant emphasis being placed on the Young Family.
It’s here that Zemeckis once again tries to innovate in terms of VFX. He uses AI-enhanced de-aging technology to depict about eighty years in the life of this family, with Paul Bettany, Kelly Reilly, Tom Hanks, and Robin Wright all playing their characters at various stages in their lives.
The saga of the Young Family initially starts off as somewhat stilted and frustrating, with Bettany’s Al an alcoholic war veteran who – while well-meaning – is so unhappy that no one in his orbit seems capable of fulfilling themselves. His son, Richard, who’s played by Hanks from age 18 to 80, is utterly unable ever to leave the family nest behind, even once he starts a family of his own with his wife Margaret (Robin Wright), whose dissatisfaction eventually leads to deep fissures in their marriage.
Here, which is adapted from Richard McGuire’s graphic novel by Zemeckis and his Forrest Gump collaborator Eric Roth, tries to tell us a deeply human story about the changing dynamics of a family in crisis. But it’s too scattershot ever to be truly effective. The chunks of the story focused on Hanks and Wright are affecting, thanks both to their superb chemistry and performances, but they have to compete with other storylines from different eras, none of which can really hold our attention. A chapter involving an inventor (David Flynn) and his wife (Ophelia Lovibond) is mainly played as a screwball comedy, while a chunk involving Benjamin Franklin feels like a reject from Hulu’s awful History of the World Part 2. It detracts from the premise more than enhances it. The entire movie should have been devoted to the Young Family.
As for the much talked about AI de-aging, it’s a mixed bag. Certainly, the de-aging here is far better than we’ve seen in anything else, including Scorsese’s The Irishman, and in long shots, the results are striking. At times, Hanks looks like he has just walked off the set of Bosom Buddies. But, in close-up, the CGI suffers from the same dead-eye uncanny valley effect we’ve seen repeatedly in films of this ilk. It should have been used more sparingly, even on Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly, to make them look like they’re in their twenties. Both are young enough that a bit of makeup would have been enough to do a more convincing job than the CGI.
Overall, I’d say that about forty minutes of this 100-minute movie really work. At his best, Zemeckis is still able to tell a solid story, even if his needle drops, as always, are a little too on the nose (using “Our House” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young is way too obvious). As it is, the movie is too scattershot to work, with many of the sequences not involving Hanks and Wright falling flat or feeling tacked on. It’s an interesting experiment, and with a tighter, more disciplined focus, it might have really been something.
Disney was in a strange place in the mid-eighties. The younger audiences that were once their bread and butter were tired of the old Disney fare, with many of them thinking their movies were “for babies.” Indeed, the success of Star Wars had changed the game, as family-friendly fantasy – with an edge – was all the rage at the big studios, and Disney was still stuck producing antiquated G-movies like Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo. They tried to make their own Star Wars-style movie with The Black Hole, as well as a James Bond-style action movie with Condorman, but neither were successful. Their big SFX-driven extravaganza, Tron, was too costly to turn a profit, so Disney dipped their toe into darker fare, such as Something Wicked This Way Comes, and the movie we’re highlighting in this edition of Fantasizing About Fantasy Films, Return to Oz.
To be sure, Disney had nothing to do with the original film version of The Wizard of Oz, but they were able to obtain the rights to the novels by L. Frank Baum. Rather than remake The Wizard of Oz, they opted to adapt one of the sequel novels, Ozma of Oz, albeit with a much harder edge than was found in the Judy Garland original. Disney wanted to be provocative, so Return to Oz had twisted visuals and a darker tone, but in the end, audiences still stayed away, and it became a costly flop.
However, in the years since its release Return to Oz has become a major cult film, especially for those who grew up in the eighties. In this episode of Fantasizing About Fantasy Films, our own Jessica Dwyer takes a deep dive into a film she considers one of the pivotal fantasy films of its era.
About a year and half ago, it was announced that The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman will be producing a remake of the 1956 horror film The Mole People (watch it HERE) for Universal Pictures… and while we wait for further updates on that project, Deadline has revealed that there’s a different “mole people” project coming our way from Rob Savage, the director of the Stephen King adaptation The Boogeyman and the screen life horror films Host and Dashcam. This one is called Molepeople and has Anthony Ramos (Twisters) and Ben Mendelsohn (Animal Kingdom) attached to star in it.
Described as telling the story of one man’s nightmarish descent into the abandoned tunnels beneath the streets of New York City, where a twisted society lurks, Molepeople brings to mind not only The Mole People but also the 1984 film C.H.U.D., which involved people living in the tunnels beneath NYC, and the 1972 film Death Line (a.k.a. Raw Meat), which explored the tunnels under London. Savage will be directing this film from an original screenplay by Nathan Elston (Succession). Details on the characters Ramos and Mendelsohn will be playing haven’t been revealed.
Raphael Margules and J.D Lifshitz of BoulderLight Pictures are producing Molepeople with Rough House Pictures. Embankment Films is handling international sales and CAA Media Finance, Range, and WME will co-represent North American distribution rights at the upcoming American Film Market.
Embankment’s Hugo Grumbar provided the following statement: “Molepeople fuels a modern audience with shocks and thrills, captivating, heightened feelings of fear. Rob’s direction is stylish; BoulderLight’s understanding of modern audiences is unmatched – and together the filmmakers are best in class.“
Margules and Lifshitz added: “There’s something uniquely terrifying about urban isolation – the idea that in one of the world’s busiest cities, you could vanish without a trace. With Anthony Ramos – who’s quickly becoming one of Hollywood’s most commanding leading men – alongside the legendary Ben Mendelsohn, we have the perfect contemporary combination to bring this nightmare to life.“
Does Molepeople sound interesting to you? What do you think of the fact that there are currently two separate mole people projects in the works? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
Remember those classic Christmas music compilation album commercials of yesteryear? The medley of Christmas songs in those commercials would jumpstart your holiday spirit and prepare you for the yuletide season. Now, Netflix has released a parody of the nostalgic commercials with a twist, in which they promote their upcoming slate of releases for the next two months to celebrate the jolly end of the year. The parody features their stars, including Lindsay Lohan and Lacey Chabert. Head over to the streamer’s Tudum site for a more comprehensive list of their releases.
However you celebrate, the holidays start on Netflix. And this year, they’re bigger than ever. Whether it’s watching heartwarming holiday rom-coms likeThe Merry Gentlemen, Our Little Secret, Meet Me Next Christmasand Hot Frosty with friends and wine, or holiday animation like Spellbound and That Christmas while snuggling with the kids by the fire, we’ve got you covered. We even have the Christmas Eve set thrillers Carry-On and Black Dovesfor the adrenaline junkies.
And it doesn’t stop there. We have two Christmas Day NFL Games to get your live sports fix, a cozy new holiday game, A Virgin River Christmas, and please, please, please enjoy your new favorite holiday variety music special A Nonsense Christmas with Sabrina Carpenter. When you’ve maxed out on eggnog and are looking for the ultimate dead-week binge, let the games begin with season 2 of our Most Popular series of all time, Squid Game, or curl up on the couch with season 6 of Virgin River.
She’s not bad, she’s just drawn that way…and that’s the problem. Rare as it is that the ahooooga-level sexiness of a cartoon would get in the way of a movie’s production, but that’s the situation that a sequel to Who Framed Roger Rabbit finds itself in, forever stalled because Jessica Rabbit is just too damn fine for the screen.
Appearing on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, original Who Framed Roger Rabbit director Robert Zemeckis confirmed that a screenplay is ready to go, but the suits at the House of Mouse won’t touch it. “There’s a good script sitting at Disney, but here’s what you have to know, and you know this: the current Disney would never make Roger Rabbit today…They can’t make a movie with Jessica in it. So the [Peter] Seaman and [Jeffrey] Price sequel script isn’t ever going to see the light of day, as good as it is. Because look what they did to Jessica at the theme park, they trussed her in a trench coat.” In other words, Disney tried to hide Jessica’s bust and legs, lest another slip occur – you know the one…
With Who Framed Roger Rabbit standing as the highest-grossing movie of 1988 and one of the top earners of the entire decade, it’s sort of incredible that a sequel never came to fruition, which is a shame because if there’s ever film that we’d love a sequel to, it’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It was on the table as far back as the release with Steven Spielberg attached to direct the project, titled Who Discovered Roger Rabbit, which would go into Roger’s earlier years. After numerous delays, reworkings and red lights throughout the decades, the film remains stuck in development hell.
Still, even though Who Framed Roger Rabbit stands as one of the true classics and is a landmark of cinema technology (it even won a rare Special Achievement Academy Award for the live-action/animated hybrid VFX), we do have to wonder if it would land with today’s audience. We’re not talking Jessica Rabbit here, but is there a viewership or appreciation for this sort of film outside of those who grew up with it? Could it get away with its obscure characters or would Disney try to cram in their more modern films, maybe have a modern-day Eddie Valiant running around with Olaf from Frozen? It’s not all that hard to fathom, really, which is why it might be best that the sequel hasn’t happened.
Do you think a sequel to Who Framed Roger Rabbit would find its audience today or should it remain unproduced? P-p-p-please leave your comments below!
A good portion of Paul W.S. Anderson’s filmmaking career has consisted of video game adaptation, with his writing and/or directing credits including Mortal Kombat (1995), Monster Hunter, and six Resident Evil movies. (He also wrote and directed Alien vs. Predator, which wasn’t a video game adaptation, but there was a video game of the concept long before the movie came along.) Now, Deadline reports that Anderson is adding another video game adaptation to his filmography, as he is set to write and direct a film version of the Sega game The House of the Dead. Originally released in 1997, The House of the Dead spawned a franchise that includes several sequels and spin-offs, as well as a remake. Uwe Boll directed a film adaptation back in 2003, and that received a sequel in 2005 that was directed by Michael Hurst.
In the game, players take on the role of AMS agents, a government agency tasked with thwarting the conspiracies of organizations that threaten the world. The title comes from the bureau they work for, because their life expectancies are brief. Anderson will be producing the new film adaptation with his producing partner Jeremy Bolt, Sega’s Toru Nakahara, and Story Kitchen’s Dmitri M. Johnson, Mike Goldberg, and Dan Jevons. Timothy I. Stevenson serves as an executive producer.
Anderson told Deadline, “I’ve loved the video game since the ’90s. Back then I was a big player of video games in arcades, which is how I happened upon Mortal Kombat. And pretty much at the same time, I was also playing a lot of House of the Dead. It’s a title I’ve always loved. The IP has grown in strength, and now it’s really cross-generational. I was one of the original players, but now I have teenage kids who also play. That is the real attraction for me, that you’ve got a cross-generational piece of IP. We’re going to base the movie on House of the Dead 3, and if you know the mythology that is all about family conflict, amidst the action and scares. It’s about a woman, Lisa Rogan, who’s attempting to rescue her father. And it’s also about Daniel Curien, who’s the son of the man who caused this mutant outbreak in the first place and who has to deal with the sins of the father. My approach will be to reflect what this hyper-immersive, kinetic video game is, which is why Zack Snyder took these creatures and made them fast moving. This is a full-on terror ride. It’s different than what we did with Resident Evil, where there were lots of traps and puzzles and things to be figured out. House of the Dead is at heart a light rail shooter game, so it drags you straight into the middle of the action. I’m going to make a movie that mirrors that approach and plays out in real time, dragging the audience straight into the action. It’s not going to be kind of lumbered with a whole bunch of back story that might exclude people who know nothing about House of the Dead. Everyone’s going to be on the same page. Everyone’s going to get sucked straight into the action and learn about the characters and the plot, as they have 90 minutes to basically escape the most extreme haunted house you’ve ever been in.“
The “haunted house” he mentions is actually an abandoned research facility that has been overtaken by creatures.
Bolt had this to say about The House of the Dead: “The original director of the video game, Takashi Oda, was very specific and never referred to them as zombies. He called them creatures. Resident Evil, for example, was very clearly based upon the Romero Zombie movies. House of the Dead is something different. These are more like weaponized mutations, these incredible steroid-ed up figures that have chainsaws embedded into their limbs. It all has a very Japanese design aesthetic, related to manga and films like Tetsuo: The Iron Man, where you kind of have bits of metal and technology embedded in human mutated flesh. And these creatures are keenly intelligent, another thing that set House of the Dead apart. They’re not just going to come at you slowly lumbering. They’re coming from the sides, they’re coming from the back. They’re trying to trick you. They’re trying to trap you. And the level of intelligence differs. And they’re all being driven on ultimately by Dr. Curien, whose life force and intelligence lives on, almost like AI. The flesh is dead, but the mind lives on in a character called The Wheel of Fate. And he like all of the great villains from House of the Dead and Creatures, they’re all named after Tarot cards. So the Wheel of Fate, Death, the Magician.“
Paul W.S. Anderson’s take on The House of the Dead is expected to be in production by mid-to-late 2025. Are you looking forward to seeing what he does with this video game adaptation? Let us know by leaving a comment below – and check out this concept art while you’re scrolling down:
