The Collector movie image.jpg

Normally a film that has been left in the vaults for over a year has little hope of being a winner (looking at you, Case 39). But The Collector (formerly Midnight Man), the new film from Project Greenlight 3 winners and Saw IV-VI scribes Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan hopes to buck this trend.

Bloody-Disgusting is reporting that the film, which was recently released from the clutches of the financially troubled Weinstein Company has been picked up for by Freestyle Releasing and is set for a wide release on July 31st.

The film marks Dunstan's directorial debut and according to B-D "Follows the story of handyman and ex-con Arkin, who aims to repay a debt to his ex-wife by robbing his new employer's country home. Unfortunately for Arkin, a far worse enemy has already laid claim to the property - and the family. As the seconds tick down to midnight, Arkin becomes a reluctant hero trapped by a masked "Collector" in a maze of lethal invention - the Spanish Inquisition as imagined by Rube Goldberg - while trying to rescue the very family he came to rob."

Freestyle is an interesting company that has made an impact on recent years by pulling large-scale releases for smaller scale indie pics. While the label is not an assurance of quality, (They released both Uwe Boll's In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale and D-Wars, a film so bad it makes you wish you were watching an Uwe Boll film), they have also been involved with enough quality work so as to make them respectable. More after the jump:

This move is also interesting as a bit of trivia. Back when the Weinstein's left Disney, Marcus and Dunstan's first film, Feast was one of the five features they took along with them. Now, with the release of The Collector on the eve of what many have claimed will be the implosion of TWC, this screenwriting duo has seen both sides, being one of the first films in TWC, and now being one of the first films out.

What this means for TWC's previously announced sequels, has not yet been revealed, though one assumes it's bad news for anyone working on those.

I like Marcus and Dunstan. They have demonstrated themselves as smart, eloquent and thoroughly decent people on the occasions during which we have met. I have spoken with Melton on a few occasions about this film's long gestation and his continued earnest enthusiasm for the project gives me hope that maybe this film, which is actually the reason they got the Saw pictures, might actually turn out to be worth the wait.

The Simpsons collector figure.jpg