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Juan Carlos Medina on Directing “The Limehouse Golem”

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Juan Carlos Medina first received the script for The Limehouse Golem back in 2012, and he was immediately taken by the storytelling in the mysterious period piece.

“It’s my favorite kind of story,” the director admits.  “To me, it’s about a journey from innocence.  We were able to show the most beautiful and darkest sides of society at that time.”

The Limehouse Golem takes place in 19th century London.  A brutal killer is on the loose and a young woman (Olivia Cooke) has been accused of killing her husband in an unrelated (or is it?) murder.  As all the pieces on the game board move into place, we slowly discover that no one is truly innocent.

It’s a wonderful mystery that recalls the films we saw from Hammer Studios in the 1960s, a fact that Medina relishes.

“I’m obsessed with the films of that time,” he says.  “I’ve always kind of liked those stories that are romantic and slightly baroque in their designs.  I wanted the film to be eccentric, over the top, and most of all, very creepy.”

For better or worse, that meant that his entire cast had to strap into this emotional roller coaster and commit to the challenges he presented to them.  Thankfully, they agreed, though they might not have realized what they were in for in the beginning.

Of Cooke’s commitment, he says, “She was really a trooper.  She fought through everything, met every emotional and physical challenge.  I’m very proud of her work on the film.”

Meanwhile, Douglas Booth, in the role of music hall star Dan Leno, faced a different kind of challenge.

“With Douglas, he has mostly played these very handsome, very clean characters, but life in the music halls and this kind of environment would prematurely age anyone,” Medina explains.  “So, we pushed to make him seem almost ugly by comparison…emaciated….brought down by the world that he was living in.  And once we had the look in place, he had to embody the exhausted life and expectations of a performer at that time.”

Still, there was one more element that had to come to life in order for Medina’s vision with the film to be realized.

“I worked the hardest on creating this world in the beginning,” Juan Carlos said.  “This environment informs everything about how the story is told.  So, that world had to be real for the actors, for their characters to walk through.  There was a lot going on in the social and political climate at the time and the environment had to reflect all of that.”

Medina succeeds beautifully with this environment, and the piece has a whole.  It’s an impressive bit of work, especially considering that this is only Medina’s fourth major credit as a director that’s listed on IMDb.

You can see The Limehouse Golem in theaters and on demand on September 8, 2017.  Check out the trailer below!

 

TITLE: THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM
IN THEATERS AND AVAILABLE ON VOD AND DIGITAL HD: September 8, 2017
DIRECTOR: Juan Carlos Medina
WRITERS: Jane Goldman, based on the novel “Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem” by Peter Ackroyd
CAST: Bill Nighy, Olivia Cooke, Douglas Booth, Daniel Mays, and Eddie Marsan
SYNOPSIS: The city of London is gripped with fear as a serial killer – dubbed The Limehouse Golem – is on the loose and leaving cryptic messages written in his victim’s blood. With few leads and increasing public pressure, Scotland Yard assigns the case to Inspector Kildare (Bill Nighy) – a seasoned detective with a troubled past and a sneaking suspicion he’s being set up to fail. Faced with a long list of suspects, including music hall star Dan Leno (Douglas Booth), Kildare must get help from a witness who has legal troubles of her own (Olivia Cooke), so he can stop the murders and bring the killer to justice.
GENRE: Thriller
DISTRIBUTOR: RLJ Entertainment

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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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