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‘Outcast’ Season Two: ‘Ramped-up FX’ says Conor McCullagh

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Detached arms, severed torsos and bloody teeth. No this isn’t a crime scene, it’s Conor McCullagh’s work desk in which he creates practical special effects for some of the movie industry’s biggest directors, producers and studios.

Conor tells us a little bit about his current projects which include the next season of critically acclaimed Cinemax exclusive “Outcast” and work-in-progress indie “Faceless.”

That’s the thing about Conor though, he will take on any project whether it be independent film or a big blockbuster movie such as “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.”

His company, “Nightmares Etc,” dissolved in 2013, worked on some of the most iconic horror movie villains in history, from Chucky to Freddy and beyond.

He helped bring “The Hunger Games” franchise to life; his work on “Mockingjay Part 1” garnered him an award.

Conor is always busy. And that’s good for us.

FX master Conor McCullagh talks season

Cinemax

The artist’s latest venture, as mentioned before, is the graphic-novel-turned horror series “Outcast,” a project from the creators of “The Walking Dead.”

With one season in the can, fans have been wondering when it’s sophomore year will premiere. Cinemax of course, is not spouting out any details of season two, but Conor talked to us about some of the things devotees can expect.

“Outcast” follows the chronically possessed Kyle Barnes (Patrick Fugit) and his attempts to exorcise the demons which haunt the residents of his hometown Rome, West Virginia.

“Right now, the producers aren’t giving anything away,” he told iHorror. “So it would be unwise for me to get into how the story is evolving, but we do learn a lot more about what’s happening in the town of Rome, and how Kyle Barnes is connected to it.”

As most possession storylines go, there’s plenty of room for Conor to do his magic and season one is filled with his oleaginous handiwork, but we wanted to know about season two, he says get ready for even more repulsion.

“The production has definitely ramped up on the FX,” said Conor, “This season, we brought in Justin Raleigh’s company, Fractured FX, to help with the workload. On season one, I was kind of a one-man department, bringing additional help on a few episodes as needed.”

The Fractured FX team have worked on some of the most critically acclaimed horror movies in recent history: Insidious, The Conjuring, Dark Skies and recently the undervalued Incarnate.

Season two of Outcast, Conor says won’t be for the faint of heart.

“The producers wanted dead bodies, surgery torsos, and a little more graphic makeup effects all the way around,” he explained to us. “Fractured FX is located in LA and was able to do life casts of actors before they flew out to shoot, as well as take on the bigger gags that I would never be able to wrangle on a television schedule.”

In true Hollywood fashion mums the word for big name projects being produced for the large or small screen. His next job is one such production. He didn’t spill the beans, but he did give us a hint.

“Sadly, I cannot go into details about my next project, other than to say I’ll be working for an amazing artist and friend, Mike Marino,” Conor revealed. “His company (Prosthetic Renaissance) has gained a lot of press for the amazing makeups he designs for Heidi Klum, each Halloween. Obviously, I’m very excited!”

The award-winning artist worked on the delayed-release movie “Faceless,” as the key prosthetics sculpturer, but he can’t tell us why that movie hasn’t seen the light of day.

“Hmmm, what can I say about Faceless?” Conor said. “Well it was a smaller indie film that my close friend Megan Areford was department head of. I was brought into design and create a multitude of prosthetics needed for the show. The story is centered around facial transplant surgery, so there were a lot of different looks. At this point, I have no idea what happened to the film. We shot that almost two years ago.”

Cinemax has not given an official announcement about the premiere of “Outcast” season two, only to say that it is “coming soon.” Some have speculated that they want to wait until the end “The Walking Dead” season seven.

Even though Conor can’t give anything away about the plot line, it’s the perfect time to binge on all 10 episodes of “Outcast’s” first season streaming on Amazon and Cinemax’s on-demand app Max Go.

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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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