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Spurlock’s ‘Rats’ Was a Horror Documentary

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Morgan Spurlock is probably not who you would call a horror filmmaker. Unless of course, you think gaining 25 pounds on a diet of fast food in just under a month horrifying.

But that is exactly what he is did for his last documentary “Rats” on the Discovery Channel.

Despite his award-winning documentary Super-Size Me, Spurlock has become recognized in the industry as an “in-the-trenches” documentarian.

That style has seen success not only at the box office but also on television with his series “Inside Man.”

Last year he went underground to document the mysterious realm of the rat kingdom, and in a Deadline Hollywood interview, he says the film was definitely a horror film.

Spurlock admits that he has always been a fan of the horror genre; his inspiration to become a filmmaker came from watching David Cronenberg’s Scanners. And after his friend Josh Braun gave him Robert Sullivan’s book called “Rats” that was the direction he knew he wanted to take the film if he were to do one.

“I went to Josh and I said, ‘I love the book, I’ve got an idea,’” Spurlock said. “What if we tried to make a horror documentary? What if we shot it like a horror film, scored it like a horror film, made it feel like a horror film, but we treat it like a straight doc?”

Spurlock’s tenacity to go where other filmmakers won’t is a childhood trait that he’s carried with him into his adult life. He did it with Super Size Me and he does it with “Rats.”

“We tried to do that exact same thing with Rats by not just showing you things that are a bit expected—by seeing a ton of rats in New York City—but then going into the labs in New Orleans, where you’re seeing them be dissected, and all the parasites and dangerous things that are in them, or going into the sewers of Paris, or going into the streets of India, where they’re killing them with their bare hands, or the temples, where they worship them, and the rats are gods,” he said.

Spurlock adds, “After we watched the premiere with the audience the first night, every other screening after that, all I would do is watch the audience because there’s nothing more rewarding than watching the audience freak out while they’re watching that film. It was fantastic.”

Personal Terror while Filming “Rats” 

Making the movie, Spurlock encountered his own horrors, especially while filming underground in the tunnels of Europe.

“Being knee-deep in the sewers of Paris was a revolting experience,” said the filmmaker. “The only reason we filmed in the sewers in Paris is because New York City wouldn’t let us film in the sewers. I’m like, “What are they hiding in the sewers of New York City that they won’t let us in?”

“I’ve trudged through anywhere between six to twelve inches of muck in a sewer, and rats running around—it’s one of those experiences I don’t ever need to have again, so I can tick that box off.”

“Rats” premiered on The Discovery Channel on October 22, 2016.

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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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