Scifi Watch » horror

The Wolfman Trailer is Now Live

David Halpert — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 23:12:48 +0000

There was a time not too long ago when recreating those classic monster movies of the past was not only original, but actually cool. The Mummy was made more than ten years ago and spawned two sequels staring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz. Van Helsing starring Hugh Jackman did bring something new to the table with his portrayal of the fictional vampire hunter. And, let’s not forget the slew of movies based on Frankenstein that were released during the 90s and the past decade.

However, with the release of the first full length trailer of Universal Pictures The Wolfman, a remake of the 1941 classic horror film, I think something has to be said for originally in Hollywood. I find this genre (if you can call it that) is really played out by this point and based on the trailer I think you might agree with me. Or not? I’ll let you decide. The film stars Benicio del Toro and will be released on February 12, 2010.

What can we expect from Eli Roth in the future?

David Halpert — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 23:04:21 +0000

Coming off his most recent acting role in Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards as Donny Donowitz (otherwise known as the bat-wielding militant known as the ‘Bear Jew’) many have questioned what can we expect from Eli Roth in the near future. Few will remember not too long ago that Roth was slated to direct the adaptation of Stephen King’s novel, The Cell, which fell through due to time devoted to other projects.

In a recent interview with Esquire Magazine, Roth had this to say:

“I’m finishing two screenplays. One is a sci-fi movie called ‘Endangered Species’ – it’s kind of in the vein of ‘Cloverfield’ – and right after that, I want to shoot Thanksgiving, a full-feature version of my slasher trailer from Grindhouse. I want to make it the highest-body-count holiday slasher film in history. Ten years from now, I want people to be like, ‘I can’t think of Thanksgiving without that image of the human body on the dinner table stuffed like a turkey. Eli Roth ruined it for us.’”

There’s already rumors circulating that Roth is in development with a second sequel to his box-office success, Hostel, thus completing the trilogy, however, it seems for now only time will tell for what the future holds for Roth’s directorial prowess. Below is the faux trailer for Thanksgiving from Tarantino’s Grindhouse for your viewing pleasure.

Click Here to View the Works of Eli Roth on Amazon
Click Here to View the Works of Eli Roth on ebay

‘Legion’ Trailer Released

David Halpert — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 23:20:35 +0000

One of the movies that caused a rather big stir at this year’s ComicCon was the much-anticipation film Legion. The film centers around a Rapture of sorts as thousands of angels bent on exterminating the entire human race descends upon the Earth with the intent of causing as much destruction in their wake. It seems the only thing standing in the way of God and the apocalypse is the Archangel Michael, meant to protect a pregnant waitress in the New Mexico desert whose baby is believed to be the second coming of Christ. (I don’t quite get it either).

The film stars such notables as Paul Bettany (the Da Vinci Code), Dennis Quaid (The Day After Tomorrow, Frequency), singer/actor Tyrese Gibson, and Lucas Black (Jarhead, Friday Night Lights). The film is set for a release date of January 22, 2010 and by the looks of this preview below should have no problem packing in theatres weeks after its debut. Check it out!

Box of Shadows Starts Filming in LA

David Halpert — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 23:56:41 +0000

“Box of shadows” centers around a group of college friends who discover a 15th-century coffin that allows them to experience the world as ghosts. While their first adventures in the spirit world are playful and innocent, the “box of shadows” soon brings out the group’s most dangerous impulses and desires. The friends find themselves pulled into a world of evil where they learn the line between life and death is there for a reason.

Mauro Borrelli, best known as a visual effect artist, was first brought to the U.S. from Italy by Francis Ford Coppola to work on Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Since then, Borrelli has worked non-stop as a conceptual artist on some of the biggest Hollywood movies and with some of the most talented directors in town. His filmography includes Godzilla, The Hulk, Planet of the Apes, Pirates of the Caribbean 2 & 3, Tropic Thunder, and the Wolf Man. Borrelli is also an accomplished director. His first feature Goodbye Casanova, starring Flea (the Red Hot Chili Peppers), won several festival awards. Lionsgate Home Entertainment distributed Haunted Forest, completed in 2007.

“Box of Shadows is a chance to bring some of the big budget techniques I have learned to a smaller, edgier film,” says Borrelli. “It’s a very different kind of ghost story. Although you have classical elements like ghosts and hauntings, you also have a story that deals with addiction and uncontrolled desire in a very modern way. What would happen if you had a machine you knew was deadly but could help you get everything you ever wanted? Would you use it?”

The edgy supernatural thriller, with screenplay written by Borrelli and Scott Svatos, marks visionary filmmaker Borrelli’s third feature. For updates follow them on Twitter at www.twitter.com/boxofshadows.

What can we expect from Stephen King’s ‘Under the Dome’?

David Halpert — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:43:02 +0000

While I’m not a Stephen King fan per se, I don’t think there’s a novel more anticipated this year than Stephen King’s ‘Under the Dome‘ set to debut this November. Which begs the question, what do we know about this novel thus far? Well, despite being four months away from the release date we do know some things. For example, ‘Under the Dome’ promises to be Stephen King’s longest novel to date, more than double that of his current novel Duma Key and nearly 100 hundred pages longer than the first edition of The Stand.

Publishers have been very close-lipped about the details of the plot but here’s what King has revealed so far. ‘Under the Dome’ is the culmination of two rewrites King began in the 80s of a novel that was never completed. These novels were titled ‘The Cannibals’ and ‘Under the Dome’ respectively.

Below are the details concerning the plot from Stephen King’s official website:

“On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener’s hand is severed as “the dome” comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when—or if—it will go away. Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens—town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician’s assistant at the hospital, a select-woman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing—even murder—to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn’t just short. It’s running out.”

While the novel will explore similar themes that were brought up in The Stand, King himself has stated that the two are very different novels in terms of plot and character. I’m a little more than excited for this novel, I might even do myself a favor and pick up a copy.

Click Here to View the Works of Stephen King at Ebay
Click Here to View the Works of Stephen King at Amazon

Tweet Watch: Killer Green to Be Optioned Into Film as a Result of Twitter

David Halpert — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:23:00 +0000

Tweet Watch is a new feature I’m going to update on Scifi Watch. Basically it’s any press release, story, or news items that came to me either from a direct-message tweet or from someone who found my blog as a result of Twitter. Looks to be interesting.

Ambergris Films LLC today announces the optioning of a screenplay that has its roots in the popular online social network Twitter. Killer Green is a horror film that mixes cultural icons such as diners and serial killers with news ripped from the headlines such as biodiesel cars and the unscrupulous practices of outlaw doctors.

In February of 2009, a group of users on the social network Twitter had an almost joking conversation about a movie based on bio-fuel and a killing spree. The project was dubbed “Killer Green” and author David Niall Wilson started typing a script. Since the idea was born on Twitter, Wilson typed the script in scenes and promoted each scene with his account. Each scene was published on his website under a Creative Commons license and broadcast to the Twitter Community. The following grew. After the completion of the screenplay, Wilson signed an option with Ambergris Films LLC. Nearly every part of the deal was transacted via Twitter, save for the signing of contracts. Pre-production started on the project in June, and many images from our production designer Jeff Ensselen are available on the Killer Green website, http://www.killergreenfilm.com.

Many notable Twitter users donated their names to the screenplay, including Internet marketing gurus Chris Brogan and Greg Verdino. There are links to their Twitter profiles on the Killer Green website.

Ambergris Films LLC is an entertainment company formed to develop feature length movies and merchandise from those projects. Started by Darren Mckeeman in June of 2009, Ambergris Films currently has two projects in development. Killer Green is the first one into pre-production. you can follow Ambergris Films LLC online at their website, http://www.ambergrisfilms.com.

David Niall Wilson has been writing and publishing horror, dark fantasy, and science fiction since the mid-eighties. His novels include Maelstrom, Sins of the Flash, Vintage Soul, The Mote in Andrea’s Eye, Deep Blue, the Grails Covenant Trilogy, Star Trek Voyager: Chrysalis, Except You Go Through Shadow, This is My Blood, and the Dark Ages Vampire clan novel Lasombra, among others. He has over 150 short stories published in five collections, one of which, Defining Moments, was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award in 2007. He has won the Bram Stoker Award for his poetry, and his short fiction. You can find him on the web at http://www.davidniallwilson.com.

2009 Bram Stoker Award Winners Announced

David Halpert — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:58:43 +0000

The Horror Writers Association announced the winners of the 2008 Bram Stoker Awards (awarded in 2009 for works released in 2008). Congratulations to all of winners of this year’s award.

• Superior Achievement in a Novel: Duma Key by Stephen King (Scribner)
• Superior Achievement in a First Novel: The gentling Box by Lisa Mannetti (Dark Hart Press)
• Superior Achievement in a Long Fiction: Miranda by John R. Little (Bad Moon Books)
• Superior Achievement in a Short Fiction: “The Lost” by Sarah Langan (Cemetery Dance Publications)
• Superior Achievement in an Anthology: Unspeakable Horror, edited by Vince A. Liaguno and Chad Helder (Dark Scribe Press)
• Superior Achievement in a Collection: Just After Sunset by Stephen King (Scribner)
• Superior Achievement in NonFiction: A Hallowe’en Anthology by Lisa Morton (McFarland)
• Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection: The Nightmare Collection by Bruce Boston (Dark Regions Press)

Shirley Jackson Awards Announced

David Halpert — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 17:40:20 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

For many horror writers and editors, the Bram Stoker Awards have remained the standard for award-winning Horror fiction and literature. That is until last year in 2008 when the Shirley Jackson Awards were first announced for “outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic”. This year the award will be presented on Sunday, July 12th 2009 at Readercon, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Burlington, Massachusetts. Elizabeth Hand, Readercon Guest of Honor, and author of Generation Loss, which won the 2007 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel, will act as host.

Shirley Jackson is probably best known for her story story “The Lottery” published in a 1948 issue of the New Yorker. She is also known for her paranomral/gothic novels that established much of the horror genre we know today.

The Award Ballot is as follows:

NOVEL

Alive in Necropolis, Doug Dorst (Riverhead Hardcover)
The Man on the Ceiling, Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem (Wizards of the Coast Discoveries)
Pandemonium, Daryl Gregory (Del Rey)
The Resurrectionist, Jack O’Connell (Algonquin Books)
The Shadow Year, Jeffrey Ford (William Morrow)
Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan (Knopf Books for Young Readers)

NOVELLA

Disquiet, Julia Leigh (Penguin/Hamish Hamilton)
“Dormitory,” Yoko Ogawa (The Diving Pool, Picador)
Living With the Dead, Darrell Schweitzer (PS Publishing)
The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti, Stephen Graham Jones (Chiasmus Press)
“N,”, Stephen King (Just After Sunset, Scribner)

NOVELETTE

“Hunger Moon,” Deborah Noyes (The Ghosts of Kerfol, Candlewick Press)
“The Lagerstatte,” Laird Barron (The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Ballantine Books/Del Rey)
“Penguins of the Apocalypse,” William Browning Spencer (Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy, Subterranean Press)
“Pride and Prometheus,” John Kessel (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 2008)
The Situation, Jeff Vandermeer (PS Publishing)

SHORT STORY

“68° 07’ 15″N, 31° 36’ 44″W,” Conrad Williams (Fast Ships, Black Sails, Night Shade Books)
“The Dinner Party,” Joshua Ferris (The New Yorker, August 11, 2008)
“Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandonment: One Daughter’s Personal Account,” M. Rickert (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Oct/Nov 2008)
“The Inner City,” Karen Heuler (Cemetery Dance #58, 2008)
“Intertropical Convergence Zone,” Nadia Bulkin (ChiZine, Issue 37, 2008)
“The Pile,” Michael Bishop (Subterranean Online, Winter 2008)

COLLECTION

A Better Angel, Chris Adrian (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Dangerous Laughter, Steven Millhauser (Knopf)
The Diving Pool, Yoko Ogawa (Picador)
The Girl on the Fridge, Etgar Keret (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Just After Sunset, Stephen King (Scribner)
Wild Nights!, Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco)

ANTHOLOGY

Bound for Evil, edited by Tom English (Dead Letter Press)
Exotic Gothic 2: New Tales of Taboo, edited by Danel Olson (Ash-Tree Press)
Fast Ships, Black Sails, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer (Night Shade Books)
The New Uncanny, edited by Sarah Eyre and Ra Page (Comma Press)
Shades of Darkness, edited by Barbara and Christopher Roden (Ash-Tree Press)