Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Anchor Bay Films has acquired North American distribution rights to Mother’s Day, the horror film directed by Darren Lynn Bousman and starring Rebecca DeMornay, Jaime King, Deborah Ann Woll and Shawn Ashmore. The film’s a loose remake of the Charles Kaufman-directed 1980 Troma film. Brett Ratner produced with Richard Saperstein, Jay Stern, Brian Witten, Jessie Rusu, Curtis Leopardo and Shara Kay. A bank robbery goes wrong and the robbers head for their childhood home, only to discover their mom lost the house to foreclosure. The new owners are having a birthday party, and the brothers take them hostage. When their mother and sister arrive, it becomes clear that the matriarch will do whatever necessary to protect her brood. She is a sadistic and manipulative woman who over the course of the evening takes control of the situation, plots her sons’ escape, all at the expense of the hostages. The film has been in the can for awhile, but a deal with distributor Gigapix that would have put the film into theaters fell through and it hasn’t been released in the US, even though it played in some foreign territories. I’m told they are looking at a potential release for next Mother’s Day, which falls on May 13, 2012.

“With Saw’s Darren Lynn Bousman at the helm and a cast featuring DeMornay, Ashmore and Woll, Mother’s Day has an unbeatable horror pedigree,” said Kevin Kasha, Anchor Bay exec veep of acquisitions and co-productions. “We’re thrilled to add this chiller to the Anchor Bay Films roster of terror classics.”Anchor Bay is also distributing Bousman’s upcoming psychological horror film The Barrens, which Saperstein and Witten produced.

Paradigm’s Ben Weiss brokered the deal. Here is a trailer for the film this is DeMornay’s creepiest work since The Hand That Rocks The Cradle: