YUZNA’S HORROR SLATE
Director Brian Yuzna gave Fango the scoop on the upcoming Fantastic Factory slate that hes producing with Spains Filmax company, the folks who gave us DAGON, FAUST and this years BEYOND RE-ANIMATOR.
‘The next Fantastic Factory film to roll will be ROMASANTA: THE WEREWOLF HUNT, which is set to shoot in Galicia in May,’ Yuzna reveals. The movie, to be directed by Paco (SECOND NAME) Plaza, concerns the ‘true story’ of Manuel Blanco Romasanta, a traveling salesman who confessed to killing 13 people in 1850, using the victims fat to make soap (!) and claiming that he was a lycanthrope as his defense!
‘Then in July, I am scheduled to direct ROTTWEILER,’ Yuzna continues. ROTTWEILER comes from the novel by Albert Vasquez-Figueroa and details the duel between a man and a superstrong/superevil dog that ‘can grow bigger and stronger each time it is wounded,’ per Filmaxs sales brochure on the movie. Filmax will also adapt the Matthew Costello novel BENEATH STILL WATERS (about a cursed town that has been buried under a lake that reappears 50 years later), while the Filmax original THE NUN (shes a killer lady of the cloth who returns from the dead to torment some of her students) has also on the studios 2003 slate.
Even more interesting news out of Filmax is that the company will embark on at least two Japanese co-productions. Sources tell Fango that Taka Ichise (Yuznas producing partner on NECRONOMICON and CRYING FREEMAN, and the producer of RING, RING 2 and JU-ON, the latter of which hes remaking with Sam Raimi in English) is in talks with Filmax to launch some flicks. The basic idea is to shoot one horror film in Filmaxs home town of Barcelona using a Japanese director, and one in Japan using a European or American helmer. First up at Filmax will likely be a film called JACKER.
Yuzna has been courting Japanese horror filmmakers since the early 90s; this new Spanish/Japanese teamup would be a continuation of his prescient NECRONOMICON idea of mixing the aesthetics of Asia, North America and Europe into new genre packages. A few years ago, Yuzna considered producing Hideo (RING) Nakatas DARK WATER in Barcelona, at which time he told Fango, ‘The future of horror is in cross-pollinating the Asian, European and North American sensibilities.’ Horror fans saw the fruits of such ambitions in the recent mainstream success of the RING remake and Dimensions THE OTHERS.
Courtesy of Fangoria
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