Happy Sunday, horror friends! Genre fans got full trailers for two much anticipated genre features this week in addition to learning some exciting casting news regarding James Gunn’s upcoming return to horror. Let’s get to it!
Horror Comedy Cooties Finally Gets Trailer
While promoting his feature directing debut Insidious Chapter 3 at WonderCon a little over a month ago, Leigh Whannell revealed that Cooties would be out in September of this year. This week, fans of the long-awaited horror comedy starring Whannell, Elijah Wood, Alison Pill, Jack McBrayer and Rainn Wilson were finally treated to a green-band trailer. Cooties comes from an idea hatched by Whannell and Glee and Scream Queens‘s Ian Brennan and is the story of a virus that turns young children into cannibalistic savages and the school teachers who have to save the day.
Michael Rooker Joins James Gunn’s The Belko Experiment
James Gunn, the man who most recently brought you Guardians of the Galaxy is returning to his horror roots with the upcoming feature The Belko Experiment and he’s bringing frequent collaborator Michael Rooker with him. While The Walking Dead favorite has been playing lots of dudes with questionable character as of late, Gunn revealed that Rooker will be playing somewhat against type in the new movie, revealing on his Facebook page, “He’s not a racist thug like Merle in The Walking Dead, and he doesn’t have a flying arrow like Yondu in Guardians of the Galaxy — in fact, he’s a pretty nice guy — so he’s ill-equipped to deal with the mysterious forces who start making all of the employees in Belko start killing each other, unless they want to be killed themselves.”
Gunn wrote both the Dawn of the Dead remake and the horror comedy favorite Slither and is signed on to write and direct Guardians of the Galaxy 2, due out in 2017. Variety explains of The Belko Experiment that “[t]he story, directed by Greg McLean from Gunn’s script, follows an American company after it’s mysteriously sealed off in South America.” I’m certainly looking forward to this one!
First Full Length Trailer for Eli Roth’s Knock Knock Starring Keanu Reeves Hits The Web
Keanu Reeves is on a bit of a genre kick as of late. In addition to completing Eli Roth’s ultra-low budget home invasion flick Knock Knock, he just wrapped production on Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon and has signed on to Ana Lily Amirpour’s “cannibal love story” The Bad Batch. Compared to the brief teaser for the flick that we saw earlier this year, we get a lot more insight into the loose remake of the cult favorite from the late 1970’s Death Game.
After having its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, Knock Knock has now gotten a full-length trailer. Variety notes that there is no release date for the US yet but the film has been picked up by Lionsgate and will be released in the UK on June 26.
