News
Tony Todd and Mick Garris: Two Horror Icons, One Birthday
December 4th might seem like just any other day, but horror fans have two reasons to celebrate the day. Tony Todd and Mick Garris, two men who have helped shape the modern face of horror, were born, three years apart, today.
Garris, born in 1951, was already making 8 mm films on his own by the time his parents divorced when he was 12 years old. He moved with his mother to the San Fernando Valley where he cultivated his taste in both films and music which would later serve him as he began to write about both.
By 1980, he was directing “making of” featurettes for films like The Howling and The Thing, further honing his skills an interviewer for which he is also deservedly well known.
By the end of the decade, this genre Renaissance man had written for “Tales from the Crypt” and “Amazing Stories” as well as Psycho IV: The Beginning, which he also directed.
Todd, meanwhile, was carving his own path. The 6’5″ actor was born December 4, 1954 in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Hartford, Connecticut where he began to study theater.
After two years at the University of Connecticut, he received a scholarship to study at the Eugene O’Neill National Actors Theatre Institute, and it seemed there was nothing he could not do.
In 1986, Todd made his feature film debut in Sleepwalk, a fantasy film directed by Sara Driver.
Could either man have known what the changing of decades between would bring?
Garris found himself in the director’s chair in a growing working relationship with Stephen King directing the big screen release Sleepwalkers before taking the reins on the mini-series adaptations of King’s The Stand and The Shining. It was during this time that he also wrote the story on which Hocus Pocus was based.
Todd, whose voice and stature seemed ready made for genre work, began the 90s with a began, starring as Ben in the remake of Night of the Living Dead. He then took on titular role in Candyman, the big screen adaptation of Clive Barker’s The Forbidden, co-starring Virginia Madsen.
As the 2000s dawned, Todd took on the recurring role of Bludworth, the menacing undertaker in the Final Destination franchise, and Garris was directing Riding the Bullet. The two men had, at this point, circled each other professionally for quite some time, but had yet to collaborate on a project.
That didn’t happen until Garris developed the Masters of Horror television series, an anthology series with genre legends like John Carpenter, John Landis, Stuart Gordon, and Garris himself each directing their own one-off episodes.
It was in this series that Garris and Todd finally combined their considerable talents to create the episode titled “Valerie on the Stairs” based on a story by Clive Barker.
Garris wrote and directed the episode and Todd made an appearance as The Beast in the terrifying tale of a novelist despairing over her anonymity who finds that there are far more serious things to fear.
Since that time, the two have continued their busy careers with Garris writing and directing as well as producing his Post Mortem Podcast in which he interviews the men and women who have helped shape the genre and Todd working almost without stopping between television, film, and theater.
It has been more than a decade since “Valerie on the Stairs”, though, and we here at iHorror wonder when the two might find themselves on the same project again!
Until then, we wish both Tony Todd and Mick Garris a happy birthday, and we encourage our readers to revisit both men’s work to celebrate this auspicious day. We certain will be!
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Movies
‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments
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:
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Movies
‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening
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.
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
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.
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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