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Magnolia‘s Magnet Releasing has not one, but two morbid anthology series churning out sequels. Its summer found-footage follow-up V/H/S 2 features connected segments by Gareth Huw Evans (The Raid), Simon Barrett (A Horrible Way To Die), Adam Wingard (You’re Next), Edúardo Sanchez (Lovely Molly), Gregg Hale (The Blair Witch Project), Timo Tjahjanto (The ABCs Of Death), and Jason Eisener (Hobo With A Shotgun). Pic hits VOD on June 6 and opens July 12. Here’s the redband trailer:
Magnet Releasing is plotting more ABCs Of Death following its 2012 high concept horror anthology. The sequel’s directors unveiled today at Cannes will include Oscar nominated animator Bill Plympton, Goya winning director Alex De La Iglesias (The Last Circus), and documentarian Rodney Ascher (Room 237), who lead a new lineup of international directors depicting assorted horrible ways to die. Also tapped to direct segments: Filipino filmmaker Erik Matti, 
whose On The Job debuts this week in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight sidebar (watch Deadline’s exclusive trailer here), founder of Nigerian “Nollywood” cinema Lancelot Imasuen, Lithuania’s Kristina Buozyte and Bruno Samper (Vanishing Waves), Japan’s Sion Sono (Cold Fish), Vincenzo Natali (Splice, Cube), indie horror icon Larry Fessenden (The Last Winter), Marcus Dunstan (The Collection), France’s Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo (Inside, Livid), SXSW breakout E.L. Katz (Cheap Thrills), twin auteurs Jen and Sylvia Soska (American Mary), Israel’s Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado (Rabies, Big Bad Wolves), Julian Gilbey (A Lonely Place To Die), Brazil’s Dennison Ramalho (Ninjas, Love For Mother Only), Jerome Sable (The Legend Of Beaver Dam), and BAFTA nominated animator Robert Morgan (Bobby Yeah). Read More »
The annual marketing kudos went big for Disney pics Iron Man 3, Wreck-It-Ralph, Monsters University, Brave, and The Avengers at the Golden Trailer Awards Friday night. The GTAs didn’t just fete the best movie promos of the year. They also doled out Trashiest Trailer (to A24′s Spring Breakers) and gave indie comedy Hit & Run the Golden Fleece award, awarded to a trailer better than its actual movie. Here’s the full list of winners:
Read More »
Rob Schneider and Aisha Tyler will host the 14th annual Golden Trailer Awards on May 3 at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills. More than 1200 submissions were received this year, an 11% year-over-year increase, in a total of 70 categories, with honors in 16 main Show Categories set to be presented during the ceremony along with an additional trophy for Best in Show. Here are the main categories (see the rest of the nominees here):
THE 14TH ANNUAL GOLDEN TRAILER AWARDS
SHOW CATEGORY NOMINEES
SUMMER 2013 BLOCKBUSTER TRAILER
“Iron Man 3” – Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Trailer Park
“Fast & Furious 6” – Universal, AV Squad
“Man of Steel” – Warner Bros., Jennifer Horvath
“Pacific Rim” – Warner Bros., Trailer Park
“World War Z “Day”“ – Paramount Pictures, Buddha Jones Read More »
Director Joe Swanberg brought his most accessible film yet to SXSW this year, with name actors Olivia Wilde, Jake Johnson, Anna Kendrick 
and Ron Livingston starring in the relationship comedy about a pair of Chicago craft brewery co-workers whose platonic friendship veers toward flirtation. Magnolia Pictures has taken notice, acquiring North American distribution rights today. Drinking Buddies has a more traditional look than Swanberg’s previous mumblecore releases, with Beasts Of The Southern Wild DP Ben Richardson doing the lensing. The pic was entirely improvised as the cast worked from Swanberg’s outline. Here’s today’s release announcing the deal, which will see the pic hit theaters sometime this year:
New York, NY (March 19, 2013) – The Wagner/Cuban Company’s Magnolia Pictures announced today that they have acquired North American distribution rights to writer-director Joe Swanberg’s DRINKING BUDDIES, starring Olivia Wilde, Jake Johnson, Anna Kendrick and Ron Livingston. Produced by Dark Arts’ Alicia Van Couvering and Andrea Roa; Burn Later’s Paul M. Bernon and Sam Slater; and Swanberg, the film premiered this month at the 2013 SXSW Film Festival. The film was executive produced by Mike Witherill, Ashley Bernon, Jessica Klapman, David Kaplan, Anish Savjani, and Wilde. Magnolia Pictures is planning a theatrical release for later this year.
The 2013 Tribeca Film Festival has announced the second half of its slate for the
12th edition of its festival set for April 17 to April 28 in New York City. The Spotlight section features 33 films – 21 narratives and 12 documentaries. Twenty-three of those films will have their world premieres at the festival. The Midnight section will open with Dark Touch. Special screenings this year include the reintroduction of the Restored/Rediscovered program with Charles Lane’s Sidewalk Stories and a special screening of Alberi by Michaelangelo Frammartino. New to this year’s festival is Storyscapes. The multi-platform transmedia program celebrates new trends in digital media and recognizes filmmakers and content creators who employ an interactive, web-based or cross-platform approach to story creation. Storyscapes will present five selections at a public, interactive installation at the Bombay Sapphire House of Imagination beginning April 19th and running through the 21st. The short film program will be announced the week of March 11. The complete list of films and projects follows: Read More »
EXCLUSIVE: Zach Gilford (Friday Night Lights‘ QB Matt Saracen) has been set to star with Allison Miller in Devil’s Due, the 20th Century Fox thriller that begins shooting next week in the Dominican Republic and New Orleans. John Davis is producing, and the film will be directed by Radio Silence (Tyler Gillett, Chad Villella, Matt Dettinelli-Olpin and Justin Martinez.) Those guys directed the last segment in V/H/S. Lindsay Devlin wrote the script. This one also has a found footage element to it. Gilford is repped by WME and Circle of Confusion.
EXCLUSIVE: David Linde‘s Lava Bear has set David Bruckner (The Signal, V/H/S) to direct Intrusion, a thriller script written by L.D. Goffigan. Along with Doug Davison, Tariq Jalil and Lucas Carter, Lava Bear will produce and production has been set to start later this year.
A young woman’s life begins to unravel shortly after moving to San Francisco, when she realizes she’s being pursued by a disturbed stalker. As the assaults and creepy incidents escalate she realizes that she has become the target of something far more sinister and horrifying.
Bruckner directed Amateur Night, the opening segment of the 2012 found-footage horror anthology V/H/S. He made his debut on the 2007 pic The Signal, which he co-directed with Dan Bush and Jacob Gentry. Read More »
Sixteen-year-old Abigail Breslin leads her first horror pic in Haunter, from director Vincenzo Natali (Cube, Splice), which will world-premiere in the Midnight line-up at the 2013 SXSW Film Festival. The slate also reunites Innkeepers (SXSW ’11) duo Pat Healy and Sarah Paxton, who star with Ethan Embry and David Koechner in first-time director E.L. Katz’s Cheap Thrills, while the Greg Grunberg-starring creature feature Big Ass Spider (sold overseas as, ahem, Mega Spider) sends creepy-crawly shivers through the midnight crowd.
Also unveiling for the late-night genre crowd at the fest, held March 8-16 in Austin, are Rob Zombie’s Lords Of Salem, releasing April 19 via Anchor Bay, the festival slasher fave You’re Next, which Lionsgate will open August 23, the anthology sequel V/H/S/2 (re-titled from S-VHS) snapped up by Magnolia last month at Sundance, and Xan Cassavetes’ sexy vampire pic Kiss Of The Damned starring Milo Ventimiglia and Joséphine de La Baume.
Below, descriptions of the nine features in SXSW’s Midnight selection along with the fest’s extensive slate of short films including narrative shorts, doc shorts, and music videos:
MIDNIGHTERS
Scary, funny, sexy, controversial – provocative after-dark features for night owls and the terminally curious.Haunter (Canada)
Director: Vincenzo Natali, Screenwriter: Brian King
Lisa Johnson is one day shy of her 16th birthday and will be forever. She and her family are doomed to repeat the fateful day before they were all killed in 1985. Cast: Abigail Breslin, Stephen McHattie, Peter Outerbridge, Michelle Nolden, David Hewlett (World Premiere)
Friday night, the first one loaded with the big acquisition titles that forced distributors to scatter their teams to cover all the screenings, gave buyers buyers a lot to think about this morning. I haven’t heard of much action so far (outside of Sundance Selects’ closing a deal for The Summit, the Nick Ryan-directed pic about the attempt by 24 climbers to scale K2, with half of them dying. Just walking up Main Street here makes that an understandable outcome). Everybody’s itching for these deals to start rolling, but sellers are not being hasty. It is hard to land big buck upfront deals, and so they are being extra cautious to extract commitments from potential distributors to make sure these films get a chance to play, with all the platforms available to turn a buck. I saw Don Jon’s Addiction, the writing/directing debut of rising star Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who with this film adds another dimension to what is becoming a most unpredictable and intriguing career path. For one thing, his aerobicized frame and onscreen bedroom prowess here has to put him on the short list for the lead role in Fifty Shades of Grey, if that is something he’s even interested in. Don Jon’s Addiction is funny, but Gordon-Levitt plays a buff computer porn addict who gets more gratification from logging on than from his prolific boozy bedroom encounters. Let’s just say a sponsorship from a facial tissue company … Read More »
LOS ANGELES (October 31, 2012) – On the eve of the American Film Market, XLrator Media has acquired all U.S. rights to UNDER THE BED, the new horror/thriller from the producers of V/H/S and director Steven C. Miller (The Aggression Scale, the upcoming Silent Night). Starring Jonny Weston, the young star of Chasing Mavericks, and Gattlin Griffith (Green Lantern, Changeling), the film tells the story of two brothers who team up to battle the monster living under their bed. XLrator Media will release the film in theaters next summer. UNDER THE BED was produced by Brad Miska (V/H/S, A Horrible Way to Die), Tom Owen (V/H/S) and William Clevinger (The Devil’s Carnival, Automaton Transfusion) and executive produced by Zak Zeman (The Aggression Scale, A Horrible Way to Die) and Miller. Written by Eric Stolze, the film also stars Peter Holden, Musetta Vander and Kelcie Stranahan. The deal was negotiated by Ehud Bleiberg and Giulia Prenna on behalf of Bleiberg Entertainment and by Gordon on behalf of XLrator Media. Bleiberg Entertainment’s Compound B label will be handling international rights during AFM and recently sold German rights to Tiberius.
Brian Brooks is managing editor of MovieLine.
Studio box office owned the spotlight this weekend, while specialties failed to impress. Sundance winner Middle Of Nowhere reigned over an otherwise blasé specialty weekend, averaging $13,005, while 
European-financed Simon And The Oaks took in over $10K in a single theater. Sony Pictures Classics rolled out its Sundance ’12 feature Smashed in four locations with an average of $7,506. The Weinstein Company’s War Of The Buttons, however, tanked with only a $914 average from 5 locations. Also opening, MPI Media’s Big Picture debuted with an average of $7,250 from two locations.
Related: ‘Taken 2′ Still #1; Ben Affleck’s ‘Argo’ Opens #2; ‘Sinister’ #3
Nicole Kidman, Matthew McConaughey, Zac Efron starrer The Paperboy headed into an additional 38 theaters in its second weekend, averaging $2,122, a big drop. In its debut, the polarizing pic averaged a bit more than $10K from 11 theaters. Read More »
Brian Brooks is managing editor of MovieLine.
Lee Daniels’ The Paperboy lead the pack of specialty newcomers with a solid $110,033 at 11 locations and an average of $10,003. That gives the Oscar-nominated director a respectable first showing for his follow-up to his lauded 2009 film Precious, although it falls short of spectacular. Even so, it bested the weekend’s other new titles in limited release. Only Abramorama’s The House I Live In came close with a $9,827 average in 2 theaters. Oscilloscope’s Wuthering Heights bowed in one theater with $8,785, while Drafthouse Films’ Wake In Fright opened comparatively softer with $6,749 in at New York City’s Film Forum. The restored 1972 film (Outback in its original U.S. release) will move to Austin, Washington and Boston next weekend and to Los Angeles on October 19th. IDP/ATO’s The Oranges bowed in 110 theaters with a soft average of $1,636. SnagFilms-Paladin release Decoding Deepak averaged $3,017 in three theaters, while Magnolia’s V/H/S opened in 15 theaters with a modest $2,667 average. Read More »
Brian Brooks is managing editor of MovieLine.
A film starring Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron, Matthew McConaughey, Macy Gray, and John Cusack may sound like a packaged
star vehicle of some sort, but apparently it’s not. It’s Lee Daniels’ follow-up to his 2009 Oscar-favorite Precious and it has divided audiences with wild supporters and vocal dissenters at festivals since debuting in Cannes. The Paperboy will be hitting theaters after its NY Film Festival debut this week and the rest will be box office history. Veteran actor Matthew Lillard will open his pic, Fat Kid Rules The World, about a suicidal high school dropout who is recruited to join an upstart punk band through self-distribution beginning in New York. Doc The Revisionaries, meanwhile, will use its Texas base to drive a later national roll out. And Magnolia is hoping to scare up audiences with its multi-filmmaker title, V/H/S.
Fat Kid Rules The World
Director: Matthew Lillard
Writers: Michael M.B. Galvin, Peter Speakman, K.L. Going (novel)
Cast: Jacob Wysocki, Matt O’Leary, Billy Campbell, Dylan Arnold
Distributor: Outsider Films
Veteran actor Matthew Lillard made his first foray into directing with a short in 2009 before going behind the camera again for his comedy Fat Kid Rules The World. But he had long considered the filmmaker hat when he first optioned the book 10 years ago. “Finding an opportunity to get it made took so long,” he said. Before launching into his acting career, he took on directing as a high school kid. But, getting the deal done on Fat Kid Rules The World, of course, took more than simply the desire. After the film won an Audience Award at the SXSW Film Festival, Lillard and his producers thought they’d be off and running into distribution. “But all we got was a bunch of options to release it on VOD,” he said. “Looking at it and understanding where we were at, we figured we were probably not going to make our money back, but I decided not to stop until we broke even.” So Lillard and crew turned to crowd funding site Kickstarter and promptly raised $158K in 33 days to help self-distribute the title. “We realized we had a pretty extensive reach in the social media world,” Lillard said. “I have fans, [Pearl Jam lead guitarist] Mike McCready who did the music for the film does as well, so we knew we could reach that [audience].” Read More »
EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros has set Adam Wingard to direct and his partner Simon Barrett to rewrite Dead Spy Running, a fast-tracked project that is being produced by Kevin McCormick at Langley Park and McG’s Wonderland Sound And Vision. Based on the series of novels by Jon Stock, Dead Spy Running follows Danny Marchant, a young DJ on the rise in the international world of electronic dance music. Danny is forced to go on the run with a beautiful secret agent assigned to watch him after he is framed for his MI6 agent father’s murder. As Danny tries to clear his name and avenge his father’s death, he gets deeper into the world of espionage while never forgetting his background and skills as a DJ. Danny must ultimately rise up and defeat a terrorist intent on destroying western civilization in an adventure that takes him through the world to London, Paris, Corsica, New York, and Mumbai.
Barrett will rewrite the latest draft, with previous drafts done by Stephen Gaghan and Jamie Moss. CAA-repped Wingard and Barrett are best known for the micro-budget Toronto 2010 serial killer drama A Horrible Way To Die, which was released by Anchor Bay. They followed with Autoerotic and You’re Next, the latter of which Lionsgate will release next year. Wingard and Barrett also collaborated with producer Brad Miska to conceive the anthology film V/H/S, which premiered at 2012 Sundance, with Magnolia buying to release this fall. Read More »
Adopt Films has acquired all U.S. rights to Jeff Lipsky’s fifth feature film, “Molly’s Theory of Relativity.”
“Molly’s Theory of Relativity” is a sexy, funny, surreal, and devastating portrait of a beautiful twenty-eight-year-old astronomer who, having unexpectedly lost her job, is poised to make perhaps the first reckless decision of her life. Her story unfolds during an eighteen hour period, on Halloween. Providing counsel on the fateful day are her husband, her father-in-law, three deceased relatives, a precocious nine-year-old trick-or-treater, her grandfather from Minot, North Dakota, and a six year old neighbor, who may or may not be imaginary. “Molly’s Theory of Relativity” is about the economy, how we value and measure the pride we take in what we choose to do for a living, the unbreakable bonds of family, and the notion that death is merely a relative thing.
Multi-territory distributor Alliance Films has announced the acquisition of 16 titles to go out via Alliance Films in Canada, Aurum Producciones in Spain and Momentum Pictures in the UK and Ireland. Last week, I exclusively reported from the EFM on Momentum’s acquisition of François Ozon’s In The House and Regis Roisnard’s Populaire for the UK and Ireland. Included in that report were pick-ups of other buzz titles like Anton Corbijn’s A Most Wanted Man and Steven Soderbergh’s Bitter Pill in what Alliance SVP of acquisitions and production Robert Walak told me was a better than expected market. Among the additional films Alliance has now confirmed acquiring are Jean Dujardin’s infidelity comedy The Players and Catherine Hardwicke’s erotic thriller Plush with Evan Rachel Wood for the UK and Ireland and Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut Quartet with Maggie Smith, Read More »
The SXSW Film Conference and Festival released its genre-centered Midnighters and short films lineup Wednesday. Eleven features will screen in the section though the festival will screen genre work throughout its sections including the previously announced opener The Cabin In The Woods which will kick off the festival March 9th. SXSW unveiled its competition and other lineups earlier this month.
“The most innovative work is happening in genre filmmaking,” SXSW senior programmer Jarod Neece told Deadline Wednesday. “Filmmakers are able to be more creative and it’s outgrown the Midnighter program itself.” Asked if he sees genre plateauing any time soon, Neece said that a reaction to movements in indie film are common, citing the Mumblecore group of films that came out of the festival several years ago as an example. For now though filmmakers are continuing to ride the genre wave. “There may be some genre backlash at some point. But at this point there are some very strong genre filmmakers,” said Neece who added that overall half the features are with distribution and about half are from emerging filmmakers.
The 2012 SXSW Film Festival takes place March 9-17 in Austin, TX.
MIDNIGHTERS
Scary, funny, sexy, controversial – provocative after-dark features for night owls and the terminally
curious.The Aggression Scale
Director: Steven C. Miller, Screenwriter: Ben Powell
4 hitmen + $500,000 of stolen cash + 1 family = WAR
Cast: Fabianne Therese, Ryan Hartwig, Dana Ashbrook, Derek Mears, Jacob Reynolds, Joseph
McKelheer, Boyd Kestner, Lisa Rotondi, Ray Wise (World Premiere)CITADEL (Ireland, Scotland)
Director/Screenwriter: Ciarán Foy
An agoraphobic father teams up with a renegade priest to save his daughter from the clutches of a
gang of twisted feral children.
Cast: Anuerin Barnard, James Cosmo, Wumni Mosaku, Jake Wilson, Amy Shiels (World Premiere)Girls Against Boys
Director/Screenwriter: Austin Chick
A psychological thriller about two girls on a killing spree. With edgy and ironic humor and a darkly meditative tone, it is also a coming-of-age story about a girl learning how the world really works.
Cast: Danielle Panabaker, Nicole LaLiberte, Liam Aiken, Michael Stahl-David, Andrew Howard
(World Premiere)Intruders (Spain, UK)
Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, Screenwriters: Nicolás Casariego, Jaime Marques
The haunting story of two children living in different countries, each visited nightly by a faceless being
who wants to take possession of them.
Cast: Clive Owen, Carice Van Houten, Daniel Brühl, Pilar López de Ayala (U.S. Premiere)Iron Sky (Finland, Germany, Australia)
Director: Timo Vuorensola, Screenwriters: Michael Kalesniko, Timo Vuorensola
In 1945 the Nazis went to the moon; in 2018 they are coming back.
Cast: Julia Dietze, Götz Otto, Christopher Kirby, Peta Sergeant, Stephanie Paul, Tilo Prückner, Michael Cullen, Udo Kier (North American Premiere)John Dies At The End
Director & Screenwriter: Don Coscarelli
On the street it’s called “soy sauce,” a drug that promises an out-of-body experience with each hit. Suddenly, a silent otherworldly invasion is underway. Can college dropouts John and Dave save humanity? No, they can’t.
Cast: Chase Williamson, Rob Mayes, Paul Giamatti, Clancy Brown, Glynn TurmanModus Anomali (Indonesia)
Director/Screenwriter: Joko Anwar
A man tries to save his family who go missing during a vacation in the forest.
Cast: Rio Dewanto, Hannah Al Rashid, Izziati Amara Isman, Aridh Tritama, Surya Saputra, Marsha Timothy, Sadha Triyudha, Jose Gamo (World Premiere)[REC] 3 GENESIS (Spain)
Director: Paco Plaza
Screenwriters: Luiso Berdejo, Paco Plaza
Koldo and Clara’s wedding is horrifically interrupted when some of the guests start showing signs of a strange illness. Before they know what’s happening, the bride and groom find themselves in the middle of a hellish ordeal, as an uncontrollable torrent of violence is unleashed on the wedding.
Cast: Leticia Dolera, Diego Martin (World Premiere)Super Secret Screening
Be the first to see this feature film coming to theaters near you.The Tall Man
Director/Screenwriter: Pascal Laugier
When her child goes missing, a mother looks to unravel the legend of the Tall Man, an entity who allegedly abducts children.
Cast: Jessica Biel, Jodelle Ferland, Stephen McHattie, William B.Davis (World Premiere)
BREAKING: Magnolia Pictures genre label Magnet Releasing has completed an acquisition of V/H/S, the Midnight movie thriller. Deal was low seven figures for North American rights. V/H/S is about a group of misfits hired by an unknown third party to burglarize a desolate house to acquire a rare VHS tape, and discover more found footage than they bargained for. The film is basically a found footage anthology of various VHS tapes that tell different horror tales, with different segments directed by Adam Wingard, David Bruckner, Ti West, Glenn McQuaid, Joe Swanberg, and Radio Silence. As Deadline reported yesterday, a moviegoer passed out last night during a midnight screening of the genre film, which is becoming a badge of street cred for festival horror films. EMTs came, after the moviegoer passed out–during the first particularly gruesome scene. Another audience member was treated for nausea about 20 minutes later. The title was acquired by Magnolia’s Eamonn Bowles and Dori Begley and sold by WME Global’s Mark Ankner. Plans are for a theatrical release in the fall and then VOD.
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