News

The Hayes Brothers are Creating a Franchise Based on the LaLaurie Mansion

Published

5 years ago

October 29, 2019

Chad and Carey Hayes, the twin brothers who wrote The Conjuring, have teamed together with Cindy Bond and Doug McKay of Faster Horse Pictures and Michael Whalen to develop a new franchise based on the infamous LaLaurie Mansion and its terrifying mistress, Madame Delphine LaLaurie.

LaLaurie was once the height of New Orleans society, and her sprawling mansion was the site of countless parties and social events. She hid a dark secret from that public, however, torturing her slaves and performing vile experiments on them in the attic space of the home.

This fact was discovered in 1834 when, during one of her lavish gatherings, a kitchen slave chained to the stove, set fire to the room in an attempt to escape being taken to the third floor, herself. When firefighters moved into the home to make sure the blaze was completely extinguished, they discovered LaLaurie’s secret.

Delphine fled the city in an attempt to escape punishment for her crimes and was never seen in New Orleans again.

According to a press release received this morning, the series will cover the history of the house from its origins under the sadistic hands of Madame Delphine to more recent horrific events that have been reported around the property.

Though the house and its original owner have been mentioned and portrayed in other ventures such as cult-favorite The St. Francisville Experiment and most famously in Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story: Coven in which Kathy Bates played the Madame herself, no film crew has ever been given access to the actual property in New Orleans.

In fact, the property has been closed to the public, reportedly due to the violent paranormal activity that takes place inside the home, since 1932. Still, it captures the imagination and tourists flock to the site each year to take pictures outside the building.

This circumstance has recently changed, however, as Whalen, a Faster Horse partner, has purchased the home and is able to grant access to the Hayes brothers, who are considering writing the first draft of the first film inside the home itself.

Principle photography is set to begin in 2020, so they are obviously sparing no time in moving ahead.

“The LaLaurie Mansion is as scary a place as there is in the world and we won’t hold back in giving audiences the full effect,” McKay said in the press release. “Chad and Carey will have their hands full, but they are true masters in cinematic retellings of disturbing material. We wouldn’t want this diabolical material in the hands of anyone else!”

“We love writing films in which we get to tell true stories – incorporating moments that people can look up and discover did in fact happen,” the Hayes brothers were quoted added. “With the LaLaurie House we get to do exactly that… there is a wealth of documentation of a very dark and frightening past of true events. Not to mention that after spending some time there, what we personally experienced was truly unnerving. We haven’t been this excited about a project since The Conjuring!”

The location and its history are ideal fodder for horror films and it will be interesting to see how the creative team handles the particularly violent history of the LaLaurie Mansion.

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Movies

‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

Published

2 days ago

April 26, 2024

Timothy Rawles

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.

“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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Movies

‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

Published

2 days ago

April 26, 2024

Timothy Rawles

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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News

Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

Published

2 days ago

April 26, 2024

Timothy Rawles

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.