It’s Sunday, which means it’s time for the horror haul, our weekly round-up and one-stop-shop for all things horror. This week in horror, the legal rights battle over Friday the 13th is poised to cause some complicated franchise fall out according to an in-depth new report, The Strangers 2 is taking cues from some 1970s classics, and An American Werewolf in London director John Landis has some thoughts on why Universal's Dark Universe is off to a rocky start.
Elsewhere, American Horror Story: Roanoke is set to scare up a maze at Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights and Spike's new The Mist series may not be the B-movie monster drama folks are expecting. Plus, new trailers for L.A. Film Festival selections Midnighters and Serpent, and more.
For all the horror news we’ve already covered on the site this week, you can click through the links below. Then, check out other genre highlights from the week and finish it all up with a rundown of the week in horror movie trailers. For more, be sure to hit up Collider Nightmares or our round-up of the best horror movies on Netflix. Thanks for tuning in, and sound off in the comments with your thoughts, questions, and other horror musings.
News:
- Watch Neill Blomkamp’s Apocalyptic Sci-Fi Short Film ‘Rakka’ Starring Sigourney Weaver
- Watch Our 30-Minute Q&A with ‘The Mummy’ Cast and Director Alex Kurtzman
- ‘Happy Death Day’ Trailer Reveals ‘Groundhog Day’-Esque Slasher Movie
- ‘The Conjuring’ Universe Grows with ‘The Crooked Man’ Spinoff‘
- Mindhunter’ Release Date Reveals Exactly When You Can Watch David Fincher’s New Netflix Series
- First ‘Flatliners’ Trailer Opens a Portal Between Life and Death
- ‘Little Nightmares’ TV Series in the Works with the Russo Brothers and Henry Selick‘
- The Mummy’: What the Ending Signals for the ‘Dark Universe’
'Friday the 13th' Rights War Could Dismantle the Franchise
The trials and tribulations of the Friday the 13th franchise continue. Earlier this year, Paramount abandoned plans for their Friday the 13th franchise reboot, which ran into one creative snag after the next with a series of new concepts and new teams that never made it in front of the camera. While that seemed to put the kibosh on a new Jason Voorhees pic for the time being, there's new rights drama afoot that could utterly dismantle the franchise as we know it for good.
A legal battle is ongoing between producer Sean Cunningham and screenwriter Victor Miller, both of whom claim to own the rights to Friday the 13th. As always in legal proceedings, nothing's nearly that cut and dry.
Miller is looking to invoke a provision in copyright law (1976 Copyright Act), which allows authors to reclaim ownership by terminating the grant of rights. On the other side, Cunningham and Co. argue that Miller wrote Friday the 13th as work-for-hire so he has no rights to the property to begin with. To further complicate things, Cunningham claims that Friday the 13th was his idea to begin with, and that without a doubt, Miller has no rights to the hockey mask-clad horror icon of Jason Voorhees, who only properly emerged in the sequels. Whatta mess.
There are a lot of other specifics and details of both sides claims, all of which are well chronicled in a writeup over at The Hollywood Reporter, but the end result is that we could end up with a case of split rights that tears apart the franchise.
Here's the suggestion by Miller's attorney, Marc Toberoff (per the THR report), as to how the rights could break down.
"Whereas Miller will thereby recover the U.S. copyright to his original film treatment and screenplay this does not prevent the continued exploitation by Plaintiffs or their licensees of prior derivative works, including the 1980 film and its many sequels; it solely relates to new derivative works after the effective 2018 termination date," writes the attorney. "Furthermore, as the U.S. Copyright Act has no extra-territorial application, the foreign rights to Miller’s screenplay remain with Plaintiffs or their licensees."
Essentially, Miller could end up with the domestic rights to the first film, as well as the Friday the 13th title, while Cunningham and would walk away with the character of Jason and other concepts introduced in the sequels. But it also means that any film using the character of Jason Voorhees could be barred from release in the U.S. There's no telling how the case will shake out at this point, and there's an argument to be made that stepping back from the Jason mythology could be the best thing for the Friday the 13th franchise, but until the judge calls his verdict, there's a real possibility that we may never see a Friday the 13th film as we know it again.
'The Mist' TV Series Is Creating a New Type of Terror
There's something that's been conspicuously absent from the marketing for Spike's upcoming The Mist series -- the monsters. Inspired by the novella from Stephen King, The Mist comes from series creator Christian Torpe, and it's making more than a few key changes to the story. The series not only translates the brief source material for an episodic narrative with more settings and a bigger cast of characters, it's updating the material with undercurrents of hot button contemporary issues (sexual identity, date rape). And it sounds like The Mist may be abandoning the B-movie monster elements in favor of a much more loose interpretation of the terrors that await.
Speaking with JoBlo, Torpe cleverly avoided answering the question of what lies within the mist outright, but he did suggest the show would be taking some liberties.
"I don't want to reveal too much about what we see in there. What I can say is, it is more a show about how people react to what they see than what is actually there. It becomes boring if you know everything that's in the show, so we were mindful of not going full-blown monster show like the movie did. I still hope we will deliver to the hardcore genre fans."
Now that's some fancy footwork that nicely avoids answering the question. It sound like we might see some monsters through the eyes of the characters, but that doesn't mean they're actually there. Sounds like we might see some other nightmares in there other than creature creations as well. We'll find out when The Mist debuts on June 22.
'The Strangers 2' Is Taking Cues from John Carpenter
It's still a bit wild to believe that The Strangers 2 is finally happening, but here we are! The long-discussed sequel to Bryan Bertino's 2008 home invasion drama is finally in front of cameras with Johannes Roberts stepping into the role of director. Roberts latest film, the shark diving thriller 47 Meters Down landed in theaters this weekend and the folks over at Dread Central took the opportunity to ask the filmmaker a bit about how he's approaching the highly anticipated horror sequel, and he promised a follow-up based on the same kind of emotional backbone of the first film, and a 70s classics he's looking at as reference points.
Here's what Roberts told the outlet:
"It’s going to be great, I hope. I’m in week two of filming. It’s Christina Hendricks, Martin Henderson, Bailee Madison, Lewis Pullman, and they’re fucking great. It looks absolutely incredible. I love Bertino’s film, I think it’s an amazing movie and tonally this movie is going to fit very well into that universe. It has a real strong emotional heart, which the first one did, and it has a very cool retro feel to it, a lot of sort of references to… I mean, I always bring a lot of John Carpenter with me because that’s what I grew up on, but also maybe going back a bit earlier to the seventies movies, from Don’t Look Now to Duel, the Spielberg movie, even Christine a bit, the John Carpenter movie. All of these influences are finding their way into the movie, but I think it’s going to be a real fantastic movie. I’m super excited about it.
John Landis Says Universal's Dark Universe Is Disrespectful of the Monsters
Universal's long-percolating Dark Universe is off to a bit of a tumultuous start. It's perhaps the pinnacle of modern blockbuster filmmaking -- an in-studio IP repurposed into a multi-franchise shared universe -- but the Tom Cruise-led debut, The Mummy, took a beating from critics and was outshone by Wonder Woman at the domestic box office with a tepid $31.6 opening weekend. To be fair, it's cleaning up overseas so the studio isn't in too bad of shape, which is a mercy considering they already announced big plans their shared universe. But as for why it didn't sit well with American audiences? An American Werewolf in London director John Landis has a theory -- the Dark Universe isn't respecting the classic movies it's pulling from.
Speaking with entertainment.ie, here's what the filmmaker had to say:
First of all, it's not a new idea.
If you remember with Universal back in the '40s, once they made all their classics, they started cross-pollinating. House of Dracula, House of Frankenstein, Frankenstein Meets The Wolf-Man - you know what they used to call those? Monster rallies! (laugh) And then of course, one of the great ironies is what was considered... OK - it's over now!... was Abbot & Costello Meets Frankenstein, which is actually a very funny movie and very respectful of the monsters. I think, y'know, maybe that's one of the problems with Universal's Dark Universe is that it isn't respectful of the monsters.
Y'know, when they want to reinvent and sometimes it works great - look at David Cronenberg's The Fly or John Carpenter's The Thing. It can be done.
'American Horror Story: Roanoke' Heads to Halloween Horror Nights
The yearly event transforms Universal’s Orlando and Hollywood theme parks into a living horror film, and this year's lineup will see the return of Ryan Murphy's hit FX series, American Horror Story. We knew for a while that AHS was going to be on the lineup, and now Universal has revealed that the latest installment, Roanoke, will take center stage.
Per the press release,
“American Horror Story: Roanoke” will unearth the twisted legacy of The Lost Colony of Roanoke, transporting guests to the haunted backwoods of North Carolina where they will experience the terror that has tormented the town for centuries. The all-new disturbing maze, reimagined in acute and disturbing details, will unmask a cast of deranged killers, from the cannibalistic Polk family who subsist by feeding upon innocent victims to The Butcher who thrives on human sacrifices. Trapped in a vicious circle of evil and murder, guests will find themselves in a life or death battle to outrun the nightmare of Roanoke before the vindictive spirts and demented killers soak the earth with the blood of their victims.
The event kicks off on Friday, September 15, 2017. More details on the full lineup are incoming (though we already know that The Shining is on the menu). For more information, check out the official website.
Trailer Trash: LAFF Selections 'Midnighters', 'Serpent'
Midnighters https://www.youtube.com/embed/vQc8kQIeGCg
Midnight, New Year’s Eve: when all the hopes of new beginnings come to life – except for Lindsey and Jeff Pittman, whose strained marriage faces the ultimate test after they cover up a terrible crime and find themselves entangled in a Hitchcockian web of deceit and madness. From Walking Dead director Julius Ramsay, Midnighters is a layered, enigmatic thriller set in the Gothic backwoods of New England – the perfect place to get away with murder.
Serpent
A romantic escape into nature turns into the ultimate moment of reckoning when a husband and wife are trapped in a tent with a deadly snake. Unable to escape and with certain death looming, the tent becomes a heated confessional to a cataclysmic truth. Betrayed, the couple find themselves spiraling into a dark and dangerous space from which only one can survive.
Ibiza Undead https://www.youtube.com/embed/riGqOdlhj3o
Three best friends - Alex, Az and Jim - head to Ibiza for their first lad's holiday. Unfortunately for them, tagging along is Alex's unimpressed ex-girlfriend Ellie. Arriving in Ibiza, the lads dump Ellie with Alex's sister Liz, and her friend Zara, and head to San Antonio to start their week of debauchery. Soon they end up in a San Antonio club, run by local gangster Karl, where the attractions aren't all alive - in fact they're zombies! Due to Jim's antics, the zombies escape, and soon all hell breaks loose and no one on the party island is safe.
Sharknado 5 <iframe width="600" height="337" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/W4A053mTYE8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The mission gets personal for Fin Shepard (Ian Ziering) and his bionic wife, April (Tara Reid), when their young son gets trapped in a traveling ‘nado and transported all over the world. From London to Rio, Tokyo, Rome and Amsterdam, the heroes seek assistance from royals, scholars, Olympians and news talking heads in their epic battle.
