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King Kong Swings into Broadway with New Musical

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We’ve seen Evil Dead: The Musical, Re-Animator, Carrie, The Toxic Avenger, and (my personal favorite title) Silence! The Musical, but never before has a horror movie musical adaptation been this big in scale. I’m talkin’ King Kong big.

With the excitement following Kong: Skull Island as well as the upcoming Kong vs Godzilla, it seems like a prime time to bring the production to life in New York.

As reported by the New York Times, King Kong is the brainchild of an Australian animatronics company. The only previous production was in Melbourne.

There had been talks of bringing it to Broadway with an initial goal of a 2013 release, but the project was delayed. The show had gained high praise for sheer spectacle, but the script and story were lacking.

Writer Jack Thorne, hot off the success of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, has signed on to rework the script. It seems like they’re committed to making this massive (and I mean ‘the main character is 20 feet tall’ massive) production actually work.

Image result for king kong the musical

Image via Ticketmaster AU Blog

Kong himself is powered by a combination of automation, infared technology, and multiple human performers. You can probably think of him as a jacked-up War Horse.

Also like War Horse, King Kong will not sing or speak (dangit!). But he will have a live actor producing Kong’s sounds through the performance. I’d like to watch those auditions, please.

There’s no cast list as of yet, but it will be directed by Drew McOnie (choreographer of London’s In the Heights and Jesus Christ Superstar), with a score by Marius de Vries and songs by Eddie Perfect.

This “contemporary take on the classic tale of beauty and the beast” will be adapted from a novelization of the screenplay of the 1933 film.

King Kong will conquer Broadway in the fall of 2018.

Does your inner theatre nerd need more news? Check out our article on the upcoming Beetlejuice musical!

Featured image via stopmotionanimation.com

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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