We’ve got some potentially exciting movie news for you all this week, friends, so without further adieu, let’s get to it!
Ryan Gosling to Join Guillermo del Toro in The Haunted Mansion?
It appears that Ryan Gosling and Guillermo del Toro‘s budding bromance will turn professional as the Drive star is in talks to lead del Toro’s long-dormant feature film adaptation of The Haunted Mansion for Disney! It may have seemed, at least for a while, that Mansion would never actually pan out thanks to del Toro’s hectic work schedule, but now it looks to be coming together with Gosling attached to star and the two were even spotted riding the ride together at Disneyland earlier this year.
The Wrap notes that “Haunted Mansion has been in development at Disney for several years, as the project was first announced at Comic-Con in July 2010. D.V. DeVincentis is currently working on the script for the supernatural family film.” del Toro has the Legendary Pictures Gothic romance Crimson Peak due out in October and produces FX’s horror series The Strain based on his vampire novel trilogy penned by him and Chuck Hogan.
Gore Verbinski Returning to Horror with New Film A Cure for Wellness!
I hope this makes you as excited as it makes me: The Ring director Gore Verbinski will return to horror and direct the film A Cure for Wellness. Chronicle and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 star Dane DeHaan and relative newcomer, British actress Mia Goth will star with Justin Haythe, screenwriter of The Lone Ranger (also with Verbinski) and Revolutionary Road, writing the script.
Verbinski’s return to the genre has been a long time coming as far as I’m concerned. The director always brings a slightly dark sensibility to his films, even the comedies like Mouse Hunt, The Mexican and The Weather Man, but The Ring is the first and only time in his director history that he has gone full-horror and I say more of that, please. While horror on television appears to be thriving, horror in film has been a dull place lately, specifically with respect to studio produced horror features. There have been some bright spots in indie horror like Starry Eyes and The Babadook, but the Deliver Us From Evil’s and Devil’s Due offerings that have been released to fans fans over the last year at least, have fallen flat. I have high hopes that Verbinski will be able to once again deliver a smart, scary and somewhat sophisticated horror-drama like he did with his version of The Ring which I still think is one of the scariest movies of the last twenty five years.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, A Cure for Wellness sees “an employee (DeHaan) who is sent to rescue his boss from a European ‘wellness spa’ but soon realizes he’s trapped, and discovers that the facility has a more sinister purpose than just serving the health needs of its patients.” They also note that Goth’s role would be that of “a longtime patient who is oblivious to the spa director’s dark designs for her.” I’m in! How about you?
