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Hulu’s ‘Into the Dark’ Premieres this October with Wicked First Episode ‘The Body’

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Hot on the heels of its highly successful Castle Rock, Hulu is bringing on more original programming with Into the Dark, this time partnering with Blumhouse to create something all together unique.

The new series, which premieres October 5, 2018, will present a new feature length “episode” each month themed for the month in which it premieres. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas…nothing is off-limits for Into the Dark.

First up is The Body, a dark horror/comedy that will have you in stitches…literally.

The episode opens on a rather dashing hitman named Wilkes (Tom Bateman) who has just completed a job on Halloween night. The man who hired him demands delivery to a specified location, however, so he expertly wraps and ties the body in plastic and heads down to the street, only to discover that his ride is out of commission.

Enter a group of wealthy, know-it-all party kids who think that Wilkes has the best costume and prop that they’ve ever seen. They beg him to come with them to a friend’s party which he agrees to do so long as they will give him a ride so he makes his delivery deadline.

The night takes a turn, however, when they discover the body is all too real and that Wilkes is far more dangerous than they ever imagined.

It takes a skilled hand to use cognitive dissonance as the driving force for a film, but director Paul Davis, who co-wrote the script with Paul Fischer based on their short film by the same name, plays an expert-level game of cat-and-mouse with his audience, supplying just the right mixture of hilarity and horror to keep them on the edge of their seat rooting for both predator and prey.

Bateman somehow manages to embody both a classic Bond villain and the classy Bond, himself, as Wilkes. This agent of death is a trained killing machine with the soul of a cynical poet and he is easily the center of attention in every scene.

This is not to say that the rest of Davis’ cast isn’t equally brilliant, however.

Ash vs. Evil Dead alum Ray Santiago’s comedic timing is flawless as Jack, the bumbling, start-up millionaire turned leader of the group who discovers the truth about Wilkes. Jack is exactly the self-serving, trash-talking douchebag no one in their right mind should follow, so naturally they all do.

Rebecca Rittenhouse, meanwhile, gives her all as Maggie, Jack’s assistant who is tired of her boss, her job, and her life. In her eyes, Wilkes is the sexy, golden ticket she’s been waiting for, and she’s eager to help him at every turn.

The chemistry between Bateman and Rittenhouse is palpable, and their scenes together are as sexually charged as they are funny.

It’s the perfect tone for The Body. At its best, the film shines a light on modern popularity politics, then stomps those ideas into the ground until they’re so much bloody pulp beneath its feet, all the while cracking irreverent, intelligent jokes.

In fact, The Body is never darker or funnier than when it is skewering the often bewildering cult of personality that seems to grow by the day, and Wilkes, with his unique perspective on life and death, acts as the perfect agent to deliver that blow.

And then there’s the excellent score!

Composed by The Newton Brothers, who previously scored OculusExtinctionOuija: Origin of Evil, and so many more, the music in The Body is as unique and often contradictory as the rest of the film. Pulse-pounding one moment and subtly pervasive the next, the composers work in tandem with Davis to keep the film moving at an excellent pace.

Mark your calendars, now, and be sure to check out Into the Dark: The Body October 5, 2018 on Hulu and take a look at the teaser for the series 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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