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Co-Writer/Director Brandon Christensen Talks “Still/Born”

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Brandon Christensen’s Still/Born began with a simple set of images: a woman giving birth to twins, a look from the nurse as the second twin emerges into the world, and the same woman standing between two cribs…one of which is empty.

He was just finishing up his work as producer on Colin Minihan’s It Stains the Sands Red. It was a grueling shoot in the desert, and as the two were discussing possibilities for Christensen’s first feature in the director’s chair, they decided that the Blumhouse method might be the best route.

So, setting aside the image he had in his mind, the two began to scour scripts that offered minimal sets, a small cast, and atmospheric tension, but nothing seemed to fit the bill. Before long, they returned to Christensen’s idea, and this time they realized they were really onto something.

“I started building around that idea of a woman who is dealing with loss,” Christensen says. “That led us down this rabbit hole of postpartum depression and psychosis, and we learned a lot about how these things affect new mothers.”

With the addition of a supernatural element in the guise of a Mesopotamian demon by the name of Lamashtu who steals babies to feast on their flesh, the two men knew they had hit upon a subject that exactly fit what they wanted to make.

“We’re dealing with a main character whose inner thoughts are where we are living and breathing,” he says. “She thinks one thing is happening and then she thinks it’s something else, but she’s never sure so we, as an audience, are never sure until it’s too late to turn back.”

With a finished script, they’d soon cast Christie Burke as the young mother in question, and were headed to Christensen’s home town, Calgary, to begin filming. When they arrived, however, they found that the house they’d rented for the shoot had been sold out from under them.

Scrambling to find another location led them to the director’s family home where he’d planned to stay during filming.

In the end, he, Burke, Minihan, and another of the film’s producers ended up actually living on the set while filming.

“It was kind of a Jack [Nicholson] in The Shining moment,” Christensen laughs. “I woke up on set every day and I went to bed every night on set. I didn’t have a car so there was really no escape.”

It might not have been the ideal situation, but the director has high praise for his crew and especially for his lead actress.

“The first six days of shooting were just her [Christie] and the baby, and a lot of the horror stuff happens while she’s alone,” he says. “She went through a huge gauntlet of emotions in those first few days especially, but she was amazing and pushed right through it.”

The film relies heavily on Burke. In many ways, if she hadn’t worked then the film itself wouldn’t have worked.

Luckily, the proved she was up to the task. Her performance is a lesson in the strength of a mother in the face of a threat to her child.

As filming came to a close, Christensen had time to reflect on the things he’d learned from his first time directing a feature film, and he definitely feels he learned a couple of valuable lessons in the process.

“There were times when I was focused on the wrong thing and it would bleed into a scene and I regret that now, but it’s like trying to sprint a marathon,” he points out. “In the end I learned to focus on story and performance first. If you do that, then a lot of other things will just fall into place.”

Still/Born will be given a limited release on February 9, 2018 and will be available on VOD on the same day. Check out the trailer below!

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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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